Nike Explores Blockchain for Supply Chain Data Collection

The Chain Integration Pilot (CHIP) of the Auburn College RFID Lab in Alabama has revealed a proof-of-concept whitepaper that seeks to display the effectivity financial savings blockchain expertise can unlock throughout the up to date provide chain. 

The proof-of-concept was designed to ingest, encode, distribute, and retailer serialized knowledge from a number of factors all through the provision chain on Hyperledger Cloth. 

The pilot collected dwell knowledge from manufacturers Nike, PVH Corp., and Herman Kay, and main United States retailers Kohl’s and Macy’s.

CHIP was launched in 2018 and claims to be the primary provide chain mission to combine the data pulled from RFID tags onto a blockchain community.

Blockchain as a provide chain knowledge answer

The mission noticed knowledge pertaining to 223,036 items uploaded to a distributed ledger. Only one% of knowledge entries had been uploaded by shops, with 87% of knowledge coming from distribution facilities, and the remaining 12% originating from a degree of encoding.

As such, CHIP decided that blockchain is a purposeful answer to problems with serialized knowledge trade throughout the provide chain. The report concludes that the collaborating firms had been “capable of report transactions containing serialized knowledge in a standard language and share that knowledge with their applicable commerce companions.”

The paper identifies “an incredible quantity of error and inefficiency in foreign money provide programs,” estimating that the elimination of counterfeiting and shrinkage within the provide chain may unlock $181 value of enterprise alternatives.

Conventional provide chain monitoring applied sciences deemed “antiquated”

Against this, the paper argues that beforehand current networks for exchanging are constructed for “antiquated web applied sciences,” and usually are not appropriate to deal with the huge volumes of serialized knowledge which can be generated all through the up to date provide chain.’

The group factors to the absence of “an efficient, industry-wide answer for exchanging serialized knowledge between enterprise companions,” regardless of the introduction of serialized knowledge similar to RFID tags and QR codes over a decade in the past.

Additional, the report argues that earlier makes an attempt to combine infrastructure to gather info on masse’ throughout the provision chain have been “constrained by the industry-wide ineptitude for sharing serialized knowledge.”