Feb 1, 2018
Batch tracing using blockchain
In our blog post about “Blockchain enabled business processes” we showed how and why business processes can make use of blockchain technology using the Unibright Framework.
The purpose of a batch tracing implementation is first and foremost to guarantee safety and reliability in the food supply chain.
The idea is to keep track of all ingredients of a product (e.g. beer, soda) and to be able to track the usage of every ingredience through the complete process of production and delivery to the customer or store.
In the case of some issue in one batch of an ingredient (polluted wheat for example), this enables the company to “track and trace” the complete network of its usage. It enables the company to determine all finished products the polluted batch has been used in and even identify all stores and consumers that have been delivered with theses products.
This greatly helps to bring traceability to the food supply chain network, but still is totally up to the company and the resellers, without paying any attention to the needs of the end customer — and this is where blockchain technology kicks in!
Until recently, we helped our customers to solve the challenge of batch tracing by centralised databases or cloud-based architectures, collecting all production data and presenting them via a cockpit with access to all this data.
By using a blockchain to keep track and trace where the food comes from we have got a secure and trustworthy data storage for all data involved that can even be presented to the end consumer. This “more” on transparency will surely grant a competitive advantage towards other companies and guarantee a higher process quality and consumer safety in the end.
By using the Unibright framework, it gets easy for business process specialists to make use of blockchain potential. The “Batch Tracing” Template defines a basic integration workflow which can be customized visually. All needed Smart Contracts for a specific blockchain are then generated automatically.
It is quite sure that an existing company already holds batch tracing relevant data in their existing IT systems. As Unibright’s main focus is business integration, the Unibright Framework automatically creates Smart Adapters to connect the smart contracts to the existing system landscape.
A batch tracing process is worthless, if you do not pay attention to the presentation of the collected data. By relying on the Unibright template, business case specific Smart Queries are created automatically as well. They allow to visually monitor the process and all data flowing in a real-time manner, fulfilling business intelligence needs as well as legal demands.
Conclusion
Using the Unibright framework and the templates it offers, the whole lifecycle of defining, publishing, maintaining and monitoring a business process is supported. The smart contracts needed, get generated automatically and the Smart Adapters allow easy integration of the existing systems. Smart Queries offer a unified way to display all data relevant to the process in one place.
