TRADE: A Transparent, Decentralized Traceability System for the Supply Chain

Abstract

Traceability has become an increasingly important aspect of the supply chain in the last few years due to customer awareness as well as better planning and problem identification. Unfortunately, technological, legal, and organizational concerns limit the possibility to utilize a centralized system to achieve traceability. Trust is one of the most important factors preventing the appliance of a centralized system. Previous works provided several approaches to create a decentralized traceability system. However, these works do not state the feasibility of their work and its appliance for the supply chain. In this paper, we propose a fully transparent and decentralized traceability system for the supply chain, namely TRADE. The system leverages the actors and supply chain structure to achieve traceability. Moreover, consumers and other parties can view all the data in the system and verify the claims of actors on the products. The latter results in positive brand reputation and auditability.