The Feasibility of Using Blockchain Technologies for an Organization's Supply Chain

Applying Blockchain Technology to an Organization’s Supply Chain

The most important concept learned in this course and how it impacted my perception of supply chain management was the potential for applying blockchain technology to an organization’s supply chain. Although blockchain technologies have been around for about 15 years and is best known for its use in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, it has also gained increasing recognition for its ability to facilitate supply chain management functions. Indeed, although significant effort is required to design and implement them properly, even legacy supply chains can benefit from the application of blockchain technologies (Wang et al., 2021).

Blockchain technologies are especially amenable for application to supply chain management functions since they draw on a robust body of data that can help identify constraints and opportunities for improvement. For instance, according to the definition provided by the editors of The Economist, “A blockchain is a database that contains the history of whatever information it was designed to store. It is made up of a string of ‘blocks’ of information that build on top of one another in an immutable chain” (Blockchain Overview, 2021). This attribute means that even highly complex supply chains that use blockchain technologies can not only streamline their functionality, they can also improve the ability of supply chain managers to monitor transactions all along the supply chain. In this regard, Khan et al. (2023) emphasize that, “Blockchain technologies can play a groundbreaking role in improving the traceability, accountability, and sustainability of complex supply chain networks” (p. 3742).It is in this area that I intend to apply this new knowledge to the field of supply chain management.