A Meta Model for a Blockchain-based Supply Chain Traceability

Abstract

In recent years, traceability has gained interest since some health issues like the mad cow scandal. Able to ensure a follow-up of products through each stage of their life-cycle, traceability provides consumers more visibility and guarantees on the items they buy. However, accessible information about items origins or content does not meet consumers, associations and regulatory services growing expectations. Furthermore, other concerns like counterfeiting as well as bad headline pressures in case of a product recall, urge firms to develop their traceability systems which currently show fragilities. Indeed, today, companies manage traceability in their way which creates silos. Consequently, information flow is slowed and limited along the chain. Based on these, the study discusses the concept of aggregating different companies traceability management systems into a single one covering all the supply chain. The concept implementation is made possible through collaborative platforms like the Blockchain. In terms of traceability, this technology presents interests in recording transactions in a transparent, reliable and secure ways. However, it first requires data to be structured before makes it concrete. The contribution of this paper is to provide a meta model as a first groundwork for a possible Blockchain implementation for supply chain traceability purposes. Its objective is to i) identify and monitor key traceability information regarded as master, event or transactional data ii) highlight the connections with actors and the sequence of events generated along the product journey. The meta model’s behaviour is then, illustrated through a case study from the pharmaceutical industry.