be thinking about it from the same perspective that we are. We felt like we wanted to have impact into that,” adds Montgomery. Kenco’s service offerings span the entire supply chain. They hope their particular voice will broaden the alliance’s horizons, forcing them to look at the supply chain as a whole, including the warehouse component of it and backing even into on-plant services. Montgomery says they would like to see BiTA ask the question: “How do we take blockchain and apply it across the supply chain, not just the transportation component?”
sure that [blockchain does not become] a vendor driven, software provider driven solution, but it’s those of us who have to live, work and breathe this industry every day that are defining how it works best for us,” says Montgomery. She adds: “If every major transportation company has their own set of standards around blockchain, it becomes very difficult for us to collaborate on behalf of customers. From the shippers’ perspective, blockchain will best serve them when it is standardized and they have visibility across every vendor and supplier to their entire network of their supply chain. “It won’t work if everybody has their own way of doing it. It’s not going to ultimately serve the customer, and the BiTA founders recognized that early in the process.” That unique sense of collaboration is one of BiTA’s most attractive characteristics. Collaborating with—to some extent—their competitors is a unique concept that is driving important discussions within the alliance. “Most people look at blockchain and it becomes a really cool thing to talk about, but there is no real value in a single entity joining the blockchain,” Montgomery explains. “The value comes when I am serving my customer and their other five suppliers. When we are all on the blockchain together, now
TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK Because blockchain is not yet a fully developed technology, companies big and small must work together to determine what makes the most sense in its standardization. Questions surrounding blockchain in the transportation industry abound, but BiTA members are focused on unanimously answering the seemingly simple ones such as: How are we going to use it? How are we going to set it up? What is the framework and platform going to look like? And who better to answer these questions than the people who work in the industry every day. “We want to make
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our customer has visibility end to end in everything that’s happening along their supply chain, and they have full track and trace at the SKU level. Now it becomes a really valuable offering. “We recognize that running a pilot for blockchain is going to take multiple suppliers collaborating for a single upstream customer,” she adds. Currently, there are a few isolated pilots, such as the one IBM and Maersk announced in January. The duo hopes to use blockchain technology to provide more efficient and secure methods for conducting global trade. But Montgomery emphasizes that “we don’t want IBM setting the standards for how everybody uses blockchain.”
READY FOR TAKEOFF BiTA hopes to publish a set of standards by the end of 2018. Once the standards are established, the organization plans to move forward with a number of pilots based on use cases in transportation they have identified. Such use cases may include: ❯❯ Track and trace, chain of custody ❯❯ Simplification of ELD compliance ❯❯ Fraud prevention, security of product ❯❯ Dynamic optimization of capacity ❯❯ Performance history around assets ❯❯ Smart contracts ❯❯ Reduction of paperwork “The horizon for real strong usage of blockchain is 1-3 years, and by year three, it’s going to be driven by some extent our customers,” adds Montgomery. “We want to make sure that when the Walmarts of the world come to us and say, ‘OK, we want you to be part of our blockchain,’ we are prepared, we have the standards, we understand how the framework is going to work and that we are ready to make them successful.”
www.SDCExec.com | May 2018 | SUPPLY & DEMAND CHAIN EXECUTIVE
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