Blockchain Potential for Supply Chain Reconfiguration in Post

COVID-19 Era

Marco Ardolino

, Beatrice Marchi

, Maciel M. Queiroz

, Andrea Bacchetti

and Simone Zanoni

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Brescia,

via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy

Paulista University, Postgraduate Program in Business Administration, 04026-002, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering and Mathematics, Università degli Studi di Brescia,

via Branze 43, 25123 Brescia, Italy

Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Covid-19, Blockchain.

Abstract: The spread of the coronavirus has had a major impact on the global economy, highlighting the shortcomings

and weaknesses of global supply chains. Major issues such as supply disruptions, shortages of raw materials

and spare parts, restricted transport, and ineffective exchange of information between actors within the supply

chain have resulted. The empirical evidence of these events is widely discussed in the literature, which has

brought out the urgent need to rethink the configuration of customer-supplier relations at an overall level. One

technology that is much discussed in the literature and potentially useful in supporting supply chain processes

is the blockchain technology. Blockchain has been gaining attraction across different sectors, even if there are

still few applications in supply chain management, most at an experimental level. The aim of this paper is to

analyse the potential applications of blockchain to support supply chain processes, to fill the gaps highlighted

during the Covid pandemic. Through the analysis of the literature, the authors aim to give a preliminary

overview on the relationships between Covid-19 impacts and benefits achievable by the application of

blockchain technology in the supply chain, for an effective supply chain reconfiguration in a post-covid era.

1 INTRODUCTION

The diffusion of COVID-19 started in China in the

late 2019, and after few months, it was declared a

world pandemic by the World Health Organization.

This pandemic has caused unprecedented outbreaks

in the supply chains of several industry sectors, with

important economic effects at a global level

(Chowdhury et al. 2021; Queiroz et al. 2020). Supply

interruptions, extended lead times, information

asymmetry between parties and a drastic change in

consumption habits have led to a real-world crisis

(Ino and Watanabe, 2021). In most cases supply

chains have not proved enough resilient to this strong

external shock, despite the continued and pervasive

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3196-8586

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4856-7300

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6025-9191

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7629-8806

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5324-6117

deployment of digital technologies that could

potentially have significantly mitigated these effects

(Belhadi et al. 2021). Indeed, supply chain

management has been revolutionizing by the

introduction of more and more sophisticated ICTs and

overall digitalization (Zheng et al. 2020). Among the

various digital technologies mentioned by the

literature, there is blockchain technology (BT)

(Queiroz and Fosso Wamba, 2019). The intrinsic

characteristics of Blockchain - reliability,

transparency and security - can effectively support the

various transactions that take place between the

various actors involved (Wang et al. 2019). Despite

these potential characteristics for improving supply

chain management, many firms are still either

100

Ardolino, M., Marchi, B., Queiroz, M., Bacchetti, A. and Zanoni, S.

Blockchain Potential for Supply Chain Reconﬁguration in Post COVID-19 Era.

DOI: 10.5220/0010676300003062

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics (IN4PL 2021), pages 100-107

ISBN: 978-989-758-535-7

sceptical about blockchain opportunities in the supply

chain management (Frizzo-Barker et al. 2020).

Therefore, while the scientific literature provides

many contributions aimed at highlighting the great

potential of blockchain to support supply chain

processes, there are very few applications in practice

and scepticism still prevails. This paper presents a

preliminary study aimed at bridging the gap between

research and practice regarding the adoption of

blockchain for supply chain management. The main

objective is to highlight the relationships between the

potential benefits of blockchain implementation

versus the weaknesses highlighted during the covid-

19 pandemic. In terms of organization, Section 2

highlights the main impacts of COVID-19 on the

supply chain management while Section 3 presents an

overview of the main features of blockchain

technology and a list of its main applications to

support supply chain management. Section 4

discusses the findings presented in the previous

sections, preliminarily highlighting the links between

the impacts of covid-19 and potential applications of

blockchain. Finally, the practical and scientific

challenges are depicted.

2 COVID-19 EFFECTS ON

SUPPLY CHAIN CONTEXT

The impacts of COVID-19 have not only been health-

related, but also economic, as the pandemic has

simultaneously impacted the global supply chain in

all its nodes (Paul and Chowdhury, 2020). Figure 1

presents the main impacts of the diffusion of Covid-

19 on the worldwide supply chain activities.

Figure 1: Covid-19 impacts on supply chain management.

Several companies around the world have

experienced supply chain interruptions because of the

Covid-19 outbreak, mainly caused by production

disruption of raw materials and spare parts, and

setbacks in logistics (Taqi et al., 2020). At the

beginning of the pandemic, managers of

manufacturing companies experienced challenges,

especially in obtaining inputs for production

processes (Rapaccini et al., 2020). Therefore, Covid-

19 has represented an external shock of

unprecedented magnitude, affecting the supply and

demand sides alike, and revealing the fragility of most

supply chains (Harris et al., 2020). Moreover,

disastrous have been the impacts for all those

companies engaged in exclusive agreements with

suppliers (Juergensen, Guimón, and Narula, 2020).

The spread of Covid-19 had also a significant impact

on society and the lifestyles of people worldwide,

fostering behavioural change in consumers (Ivanov

and Dolgui, 2020; Queiroz et al., 2020). People

drastically reduced the number of visits to physical

shops due to the fear factor by increasingly exploiting

shopping online (Borsellino, Kaliji, and Schimmenti,

2020; Seetharaman, 2020). Therefore, Covid-19

pandemic effects have also shed light on the need to

think about the social impacts of individuals. One of

the most important emotional impacts has

undoubtedly been panic buying, that is an

accumulation of goods that happens in periods of

severe uncertainties which increases the demand for

certain essential items (Borsellino, Kaliji, and

Schimmenti, 2020; Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2021). The

spread of Covid-19 virus has also pushed

governments to introduce policies addressing the

national control of supply chains in unexpected ways

through, for example, export restrictions on some

medicines and medical equipment (Xu et al. 2020).

Crisis response arose in the worldwide mass

production of single-use and other disposable

products such as gloves, masks, face shields, and

other equipment (Diaz-Elsayed, Morris, and Schoop

2020). This massive source of plastic waste could

become an environmental disaster if not managed

effectively. Moreover, an increase in online shopping

has also provoked a surge in the production and

demand for packaging materials, thus causing a

significant increase in the amount of waste generated

(Liu et al. 2020). In some cases, emergency and

supply shortages have led to the relaxation of certain

product controls to facilitate rapid procurement. The

relaxation of regulations has certainly brought

benefits, but there is also the other side of the coin

since fraudulent products claiming to cure, treat or

prevent COVID-19 have been on the rise (Fairgrieve

et al., 2020).

Blockchain Potential for Supply Chain Reconﬁguration in Post COVID-19 Era

101

3 BLOCKCHAIN

3.1 Blockchain Technology

BT is a decentralized peer-to-peer system without a

central authority, which can disrupt traditional

operations management by providing a transparent,

open, trusted platform (Hibbert, 2017; Yoo and Won,

2018). The chained structure consists of a time

sequence of blocks, which are a collection of data

containing transactions-related information and

records. The key concepts of blockchain are (Marchi

et al., 2019): (i) peer-to-peer distributed shared

ledger, (ii) consensus, (iii) cryptography, and (iv)

smart contracts. Several benefits can be introduced

using the blockchain technology (Hibbert, 2017),

such as transparency of trades tracking (automation

allows the real time updating of transactions

information), data protection, accuracy, and security

(providing a single shared view of information in the

nodes, stored transactions cannot be duplicated,

altered, or deleted without parties’ consensus which

foster trust among them), resilience (the distributed

nature of blockchain allows to avoid single points of

failure), efficiency (reduced transaction-related cost

mainly due to the absence of third-party

intermediaries and to the reduction of the complexity

that should be managed), risk reduction (shared

information allows to better manage risks and to

reduce their impacts). Furthermore, faster

transactions can be enabled, reducing the probability

to incur in delays which come at a cost. BT has, thus,

a great potential to support companies in managing

the complexity and to change the human-to-human

and business cooperation model.

3.2 Blockchain Applications in the

Supply Chain

BT has a wide range of application and the

potentialities to disrupt several sectors (Figure 2).

Specifically, in the supply chain and logistics

activities, it can offer new ways of monitoring and

managing the different flows (i.e., materials,

information and financial) through the entire lifecycle

of the goods.

Product Traceability. Given its unique

characteristics, blockchain help managing product

traceability within the supply chain (Behnke and

Janssen, 2020). In some contexts, the need to

implement a traceability system within the supply

chain is crucial. Consumers’ sensibility is increased,

Figure 2: BT applications in supply chain management.

especially in food and pharmaceutical sector (Behnke

and Janssen, 2020). For this reason, in many cases,

national and international regulations have become

much stricter with improved quality controls.

Therefore, suppliers might want to show their

products’ origin and quality to consumers and to

comply with regulations. Traditionally, traceability

has been managed by independent actors whose task

was to carry out the appropriate checks and verify the

authenticity of the information provided (Lu & Xu,

2017). These solutions generally rely on centralized

systems and are characterized by the high risk of

suffering of data manipulations because of lack of

transparency and trust. The blockchain overcomes

these problems as all blocks are cryptographically

connected, minimizing all possible risks of data

manipulations (Sunny et al. 2020). In addition, since

it is a distributed ledger, it is possible at any time and

in real time to find out information about a product

and its entire history such as: timestamps, location,

and environment characteristics (Kim et Laskowski,

2017). Therefore, BT has the potentiality to improve

traceability of products thanks to the immutability of

stored transactional data, and the maintenance of only

one version of the transactional database without a

third-party intermediate “accountant” (Tapscott and

Tapscott, 2016).

Transparency and Visibility. The traceability

applications offered by blockchain technology have

positive repercussions in supply chain transparency

and visibility (Kamble et al., 2020). Traceability

helps gathering the history of a product within the

supply chain and this might drastically improve

visibility (Agrawal, Sharma, and Kumar, 2018).

Transparency involves the overall visibility of the

supply chain among the different players and is

enabled by traceability through tracing and tracking

(Sunny et al., 2020). Transparency is guaranteed by

complete visibility, that is the capability to access or

IN4PL 2021 - 2nd International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics

102

share information across the supply chain. Ben-Daya

et al. (2019) describes supply chain visibility as “the

ability of a firm to collect, access, assess and share

useful, accurate, trusted, secure and timely

information across its internal functions as well as the

supply chain partners and market”. Supply chain

visibility does not involve only information

availability but requires accuracy of data and a shared

structure that enables all the nodes to make decisions

in a timely manner. Traditional centralized systems

are generally inefficient in achieving an adequate

supply chain visibility. Indeed, third-party

involvement might cause longer transaction times and

high cost with several issues concerning integration

of physical and digital worlds (Reddy et al. 2019). In

a global context where business environments are

becoming more and more decentralized, blockchain

applications may create collaborative environments

for improving supply chain performances (Sunny et

al. 2020). BT also helps improving transparency by

eliminating the lack of trust in the supply chain

(Kamble et al., 2018). The potential benefits are

evident in the management of the delivery cycle,

reducing discrepancies regarding information flow,

and the quality of product delivered (Haoyan et al.

2017). Therefore, structural characteristics of the

blockchain are set in a way such that security and

transparency is effectively achieved (Dutta et al.

2020). BT thus improve visibility, making the supply

chain reactive to external changes.

Business Model Innovation. Business model brings

together the main features of a business through

which inputs are transformed into outputs creating

and delivering value for customers (Teece, 2010).

Generally, it is crystallized using specific tools (e.g.,

the business model canvas) that help practitioners

assess the business and evaluate appropriate

innovations (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). The

impact of BT on the configuration of a business

model can be potentially disruptive, offering the

opportunity to create genuine new business. BT might

transform the business model enhancing the whole

process in a transparent and trustworthy way

(Shahzad, 2020). Parida et al. (2019) focused on the

potentialities of blockchain in innovating the value-

capture component of business model exploiting the

characteristics of smart contracts. BT also offers the

opportunity to revolutionize the world of the sharing

economy by ensuring greater reliability and security

in the exchange of information between the actors

involved. A further potential application of

blockchain is to support businesses that offer the

sharing of production resources through paradigms

such as distributed, cloud or shared manufacturing

(Yu C. et al., 2020). It is therefore possible to have

considerable improvements in efficiency, avoiding

brokerage expenses, especially in those contexts

where two parties are involved, such as a buyer and a

seller (Morkunas et al., 2019). This, together with the

functionality of smart contracts, provides

opportunities for general innovation in value

propositions in different areas, based on the provision

of product and advanced services combinations

(Wenngren et al., 2020). In fact, in recent decades,

there has been an increasing development of the

mindset that exploiting the opportunity, to earn

revenue for non- physical aspects of products, such as

consulting and maintenance. This phenomenon goes

under the term of servitization (Vandermerwe and

Rada, 1988), which then, following the introduction

of digital technologies, evolved into the concept of

digital servitization (Kohtamaki et al. 2019; Eloranta

et al. 2021). The adoption of blockchain in this sense

can be of enormous value as it guarantees a more

effective management of information relating to the

state of the machine in maintenance contracts (Chang

et al., 2021).

Supply Chain Finance. Supply Chain Finance (SCF)

can be defined as “the inter-company optimization of

financing as well as the integration of financing

processes with customers, suppliers, and service

providers in order to increase the value of all

participating companies” (Pfohl and Gomm, 2009).

SCF, through the joint coordination of the financial

flow together with the product and information flows,

allow to provide visibility and control over all cash-

related processes within a supply chain, to optimize

the management of financial flows at an inter-

organizational level and to implement a set of

solutions which can result in lower debt costs, new

opportunities for obtaining the required capital

(especially for weak supply chain players), improved

profitability and reduced working capital within the

supply chain (Wuttke et al., 2013, Caniato et al.,

2016). The SCF mechanisms can be grouped as

(Marchi et al., 2020): supplier-based finance (e.g.,

trade credit), buyer-based finance (e.g., reverse

factoring), or both depending on the specific case

(e.g., revenues sharing contracts). Traditional

solutions of SCF can be further improved when firms

make better use of digital technologies (Gelsomino et

al., 2016). Advanced use of those technologies will

result in innovative solutions and more benefits to the

supply chain. BT can support SCF by securely

storing, selling, and accessing the huge volume of

data generated through IoT devices in the supply

Blockchain Potential for Supply Chain Reconﬁguration in Post COVID-19 Era

103

chain, speeding up cash-flow exchanges, and

allowing instant payments with smart contracts which

shortens the cash payment cycle (Wang et al., 2019).

In practice, some application of BT-SCF can also be

observed (Li et al., 2021): Chained Finance, launched

by Foxconn, the financial services arm of iPhone

manufacturer, and Dianrong, the Chinese online

lender, claims to be the first-ever blockchain platform

for SCF by securing funding for SMEs in China that

were otherwise unable to secure needed capital. IBM,

together with the Chinese firm Sichuan Hejia Co.,

Ltd., in 2017, launched a BT-SCF platform for

pharmaceutical procurement to improve efficiency,

transparency and operation of SCF. This platform is

beneficial to SMEs which often find it difficult to

raise funds due to underdeveloped credit systems and

a lack of established credit evaluation and risk

control. Research that bridges blockchain and supply

chain finance is nearly non-existent. Hence, it

represents a noteworthy research stream that should

be investigated.

Sustainability and Circular Economy. Supply

chains are experiencing a high pressure from the

society to implement sustainable business practices.

BT can offer a great potential for bringing supply

chain to higher levels of sustainability in terms of

reduced environmental and social impacts. Thanks to

the enhanced traceability, BT allows to effectively

reduce waste using smart contracts, to trace

dangerous products and materials preventing

environmental damages and to monitor the

environmental compliance along the supply chain

(Kouhizadeh and Sarkis, 2018). BT can also trace

defected items precisely, so the need of rework and

recall can be reduced, which means decreased waste

and resource consumption (Saberi et al., 2019). The

tracing of the materials, the authentication of

involved actors for recycling purpose, and the use of

smart contracts for financial transactions support

reverse logistics and facilitate circular economy

activities (Kouhizadeh and Sarkis, 2018; Böckel et

al., 2021). BT also offers a solution for the energy

management that fits the new energy paradigm and

allows to increase the energy efficiency of the system

by automating the process of energy supply contracts,

and lowering energy losses and, consequently,

consumptions, and to increase the shares of

renewable sources (Marchi et al., 2019). Since

information in blockchain cannot be altered without

the permission, BT can improve the social dimension

of sustainability (i.e., social justice) preventing the

corruption of individuals, governments, or

organizations from seizing the assets of people

unjustly. Moreover, it can provide better assurance of

human rights and fair work practices. For example, a

transparent record of product information assures

buyers that the product being purchased is supplied

and manufactured from a verified ethical source

(Mahyuni et al., 2020).

Supply Chain Relationship Management.

Blockchain, thanks to the distributed ledger and the

smart contracts, enhances the ability to communicate

and collaborate between supply chain actors and

fosters interactions among the entities in the system,

without any need of intermediary in the market

system (Kasten, 2020). This will address the

asymmetrical issues among economic participants

and allow peer-to-peer asset trading reducing the

operational costs and increasing the speed of

transactions. BT allows also to increase the trust

between SC partners, which has a positive impact on

supply chain relationship management and on the

risks associated with collaborative activities (Wang et

al., 2019). In a blockchain platform, entities

spontaneously interact in a well-defined context, and

are prevented from behaving unethically or

opportunistically since any corruption or unethical

behaviour will be readily visible to al network

participants. The increased trust supporting

collaboration between participant can also support the

implementation of SCF solutions.

4 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSIONS

The previous sections have shown the main effects of

COVID-19 on the supply chain, highlighting the

causes that led to a global crisis that affected so many

sectors of the manufacturing world and beyond. In

fact, the spread of the coronavirus has highlighted

many potential weaknesses in global supply chain

management. The potential adoption of blockchain in

this area could have partially mitigated this impact.

The trust and reliability that characterises the

blockchain technology makes the relationships

between actors involved within the supply chain more

effective, facilitating the exchange of information and

reducing potential opportunistic behaviour. The

applications supporting traceability also ensure full

real-time knowledge of the positioning of incoming

goods, providing all the information needed to take

corrective action in the event of delays in the lead

times. BT also supports Supply chain Finance and

supplier development which allows to reduce the

IN4PL 2021 - 2nd International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics

104

financing issues, especially for SMEs, by providing

the platform and by increasing trust and collaboration

among SC partners. Lack of supply of some nodes of

the supply chain can lead to an increase in

indebtedness, causing outbreaks that can have

cascading repercussions on the entire supply chain,

with significant effects on SMEs. The application of

supply chain finance, with the support of blockchain

technology, can certainly mitigate these effects.

Traceability applications in the blockchain are also

useful in effectively identifying the introduction of

counterfeit products, or products that have not passed

any quality controls. This is especially important for

health products or even in the agri-food sector.

Certainly, in very chaotic contexts such as that of a

pandemic, having a reliable technology at one's

disposal can prevent the introduction of potentially

harmful products onto the market. This opportunity,

however, is always valid especially in those contexts

where the supply chain is very long and the possibility

of having an effective control is scarce. This reduces

the likelihood of the so-called bullwhip effect. These

applications also reduce the need for national control

by governments, avoiding restrictive policies that

occurred during the covid-19 pandemic. The use of

BT-enabled smart contracts is an important resource

with precise clauses linked to the fulfilment of certain

conditions set by the parties involved. The adoption

of blockchain can also be a valuable support for the

continuing waste increase, the repercussions of which

have been stressed even more by the pandemic

measures of social distancing and use of personal

protective equipment. It is therefore clear that the

application of blockchain technology has the

potential to strengthen and make more effective those

elements of supply chain management that have been

challenged by the deployment of covid-19.

This paper aims to present the results of a

preliminary study whose objective is to bridge the gap

between research and practice regarding the

application of blockchain technology to support

supply chain management processes. The main

limitation of this paper lies in the methodological

framework of the preliminary study, as the

relationships between the impacts of COVID-19 and

blockchain applications are not supported by any

reference framework. Moreover, the considerations

made are purely theoretical, without concrete

validation through empirical methods. Future

research directions will be addressed to make the

methodology of this research more robust, with the

aim of demonstrating empirically how blockchain

technology can support the reconfiguration of the

supply chain in the post covid-19 era.

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