Towards a distributed ledger system for supply chains

Abstract

Interoperability and traceability of digital supply chains are becoming a major competitive factor. Businesses operating in supply chains need to share interoperable information and systematically track product and service deliveries. This research investigates a novel approach to model digital supply chains and operationalizes this through a "Distributed Ledger System" in combination with "Smart Contracts". Based on design science, relevance and rigor for a novel approach are derived. As resulting ‘artifacts’, exemplary supply chains using colored Petri-nets are modeled as a structured and automatable instance for the sketched ‘Token-flow Supply Chains’. For the operation of our visionary scenario, a baseline concept with an associated architecture is drafted. We argue that the outlined approach and related artifacts are predestined to achieve a new quality of performance and innovation including bridging the current challenges for digital supply chains.