International Workshop on Successful Strategies in Supply Chain Management Sample Template Paper

Table 1. Summary of interviewees 
ID # 
Organisational Role/Responsibility 
Location 
A 
Global Head of Logistics Strategy & Innovation 
UK 
B 
Logistics Controller 
Switzerland 
C 
Head of Customer Systems 
Switzerland 
D 
Supply chain manager 
UK 
E 
Process, Innovation, and Technology Improvement Senior Manager Indonesia 
F 
Regional Operational Account Manager
Germany 
G 
Logistics expert 
UK 
H 
Global Optimization and Analytics Manager 
Romania 
I 
Corporate IT Customer Systems 
Switzerland 
J 
CEO (Logistics service provider) 
Indonesia 
K 
Logistics Consultant 
Indonesia 
L 
IT consultant
UK 
M 
Productivity Systems & Solution 
Portugal 
N 
CEO – IT service provider 
UK 
4. 
Research Findings
4.1 Summary of findings from literature review  
Our literature review identified the following factors which explain why the Blockchain is 
important to logistics and supply chain sector.
Transparency, authenticity, trust and security

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5 
Blockchain enabled transactions (a series of transactions required to get a product from place 
to place) offer transparency to participating companies – a block could be created for each 
transaction from the manufacture of a product to its distribution and sale. This level of 
transparency and visibility is essential to improve the traceability of the products and ensure 
products authenticity and legitimacy. For tracking the products, digital footprint could be used, 
such as information tag, GPS and RFID (Abeyreatne and Monfared 2016). As all data 
recorded within the blockchain is distributed among all network members, records of 
transactions and activities are transparent and open for every member to access, compared to 
the traditional method of utilising a central third party governance. Each participant can check 
the progress and the location of the products and share the same information in the system 
(Kim and Laskowski 2016).
There seems to be a consensus in the literature that this improved visibility provides an 
auditable trace of the footprint of a product – particularly attractive to industries where 
provenance of product is of critical importance such as diamonds, fine arts, luxury goods and 
pharmaceutical ingredients. This could boost the consumers’ confidence and trust of the 
vendor (Loop 2017). The transparency achieved in a blockchain is also considered to be 
pivotal to build much needed trust into the supply chain and may revolutionise how we 
understand and research ‘trust’ in the supply chain.
The nature of blockchain plays an 
important role in stolen merchandise recovery and avoiding fraudulent transactions.
Improved security is another motivational factor why blockchain may be adopted in supply 
chain, as it protects against tampering, fraud, and cybercrime (Lohade 2017). To achieve 
security, reliability and authenticity has to be established. This is translated as data integrity, 
one of the key attributes of Blockchain-based ledgers (Yli-Huumo, et al. 2016). Once formed 
into the linear chain, the information stored within a blockchain is immutable. This is due to 
the technology’s distributed consensus characteristics, where only one true, verified version of 
the data is stored in all members of the network. Gupta (2017) points out that permissioned 
blockchain is of particular value to businesses as it offers enhanced privacy (Access to 
transactions can be determined by the roles/responsibilities of users), auditability (A shared 
ledger that serves as a single source of truth improves the ability to monitor and audit 
transactions) and increased operational efficiency (transactions can be conducted at a speed 
more in line with the pace of doing business).