Supply Chain and Blockchain
In Chain Unity there’s Strength
PART 1
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What’s the first thing that comes into your mind when you enter a supermarket? Should I buy more milk, or more cereal? Surely you don’t ask yourself what is the process that a product needs to follow in order to be in your hands.
A life cycle of a product may be a little intriguing, it goes through a lot of processes and middlemen. This set of processes is called “supply chain”. A supply chain is the sequence of procedures involved in the production and distribution of a product; It is a connected network of organizations, information, data, people, activities that are involved in the distribution of a product or service from supplier to customer.
The management of the Supply chain is essential for the life cycle of a product to reach its purpose.

The 5 Key activities of supply chain management:
- Plan or strategy.
- The source (of raw materials or services).
- Manufacturing (focused on productivity and efficiency).
- Delivery and logistics.
- Return system (for defective or unwanted products).
The supply chain manager tries to minimize shortages and keep costs down, optimizing the processes.
According to Investopedia, the key takeaways are:
- Supply chain management (SCM) is the centralized management of the flow of goods and services and includes all processes that transform raw materials into final products.
- By managing the supply chain, companies are able to cut excess costs and deliver the products to the consumer faster.
- Good supply chain management keeps companies out of the headlines and away from expensive recalls and lawsuits.
The current supply chain model is not offering its true potential.
How the current version of supply chain model is not enough?
Currently, supply chains are more complex than hundreds of years ago, because they were only local, the globalization is the one to blame for. Since this phenomenon happened, a big portion of products are manufactured in China, this is because of the low workforce costs.
Nowadays, customers and/or buyers don’t know exactly the true value of the goods, and if they were to investigate illegal activities and suspicious behavior, it is extremely difficult to obtain a result due to the lack of transparency in the system.
So, imagine that all those processes mentioned above can be deployed in a transparent, traceable and secure platform where all the activities are further optimized, lowering the costs even more. That’s when Blockchain Technology comes in.
Supply Chain & Blockchain Technology

The supply chain processes depend totally on the type of product, it can have over hundreds of stages, multiple geographical locations, multiple invoices, multiple intermediaries that can lead to months of planning. Due to the lack of transparency and traceability in the common model of supply chains, many companies are interested in blockchain.
As mentioned in many of our Medium Articles published on our profile Telos Feed, the most common use of blockchain technology is for cryptocurrency, but it has many applications. Not only it can offer a platform where supply chain managers can trace and verify all the key activities, but they can do it in a very practical and transparent way. Since all transactions are recorded on a block and across multiple copies of the ledger that are distributed over many nodes (computers), it is highly secure.
Blockchain can increase the efficiency in all supply chain steps, that come from warehousing, delivering and payment. It encourages everyone to participate on the network because blockchain is for everyone!
If you are a businessman or businesswoman, a developer, an enthusiast, an investor, a company, a mother, a father, a teacher or even a student, think about evolution and be part of the future!
If you want to know more about real cases of chain supply on blockchain, follow the next series of the article.
