The 1st Blockchain-Based SLA for Third-Party Logistics (3PL) Service Providers

3 min readDec 8, 2018

Service Level Management, or SLM, is a business process that helps service providers negotiate service level agreements with customers, and design services in accordance with agreed service levels.

SLA and SLM don’t just apply to the reliable delivery of Online Services. They are also powerful tools to keep third-party logistics providers accountable for the physical delivery of Goods.

“Logistics is about getting the right product, to the right customer, in the right quantity, in the right condition, at the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost (the 7 Rs)” — Dr. John J. Coyle, PhD, Director of Corporate Relations for Center for Supply Chain Research (CSCR) and Professor Emeritus of Supply and Information Systems

Fail-Proof Supply Chain Automation

In their efforts to meet the 7Rs requirements of Logistics, Decentralized Ledger Technologies are a perfect opportunity to increase fairness, inclusiveness, accountability, transparency and trust between suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and customers. — Wilhem Pujar, CEO at Stacktical

Just like it is automating service level agreements for online services, the Stacktical platform can also change how Third-Party Logistics Service Providers and customers transact in a Supply Chain.

That is exactly why, at the Nikkei TRAN/SUM 2018 event, our CTO JeanDaniel Bussy has introduced the very 1st running example of 3PL SLA on the Blockchain.

3PL SLA on the Blockchain: a Demo

The objective of our TRAN/SUM live demonstration was to showcase how a Decentralized SLA can guarantee the safe and timely delivery of organs from Hospital A to Hospital B, and possibly change the outcome of life-threatening situations.

Requirements

We started out by setting the transportation requirements of organs in a Stacktical Service Level Agreements, such as the maximum / minimum temperatures and acceptable G-force measurements.

Load Containment is a very important aspect of Supply Chain in general. In that case, preventing the damaging of organs by monitoring how forces are applied to the package is mission-critical.

An unexpected event

In our scenario, the organ has unfortunately been exposed to critical temperatures as it was being transported from hospital A to hospital B.

The patient is at risk because the right transportation conditions for the organ were not ensured, making it potentially unsuitable for transplant.

On our **3PL SLA PoC**, the agreed temperature levels were not met during transportation.

Benefit

In this situation the SLA has been enforced and the accountability of the Third-Party Logistics Providers has been established. The dispute between hospital executives and 3PL is automatically settled without claims, using remediation policies in the SLA Smart Contract.

A new emergency organ shipment, for example.

Conclusion

You may now connect to logistics.poc.stacktical.com on the Ropsten network to give the 3PL SLA PoC a try.

While we’re staying committed to tackle the $9B industry of SLM of online services, we are certainly looking forward to exploring multiple industry verticals as we scale our operations in the years to come.

These early results in the Supply Chain space are encouraging, and we would like to thank our growing network of partners for making this first PoC possible, as well as the incredible Nikkei production team for their invitation !

About Stacktical

Stacktical helps online service providers automatically compensate customers for slowdowns, downtimes and unresponsive customer support using DSLA, the Decentralized Service Level Agreement token.