Blockchain Technology for Secure Supply Chain Management: A Comprehensive Review

Supply chain management (SCM) is a core corporate activity responsible for moving commodities and services from one point to another through various stakeholders. The traditional SCM is based on a centralized approach managed at the central headquarter, and all other sub-offices get instructions from the main office. Some major issues with present SCM systems are security, transactional transparency, traceability, stakeholder involvement, product counterfeiting, additional delays, fraud, and instabilities. Blockchain (BC) emerges as a technology that can manage the data and build trust efficiently and transparently. It can also aid in transaction authorization and verification in the supply chain or payments without a third party. To address the present SCM issues, BC technology is a feasible solution. Motivated by the aforementioned considerations, in this paper, we present a survey on the adoption of BC in SCM. This paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the literature on BC characteristics, implementations, and business consequences in various SCM. This Blockchain-centered study, in particular, discloses the research state and delineates future research directions by studying and analyzing 97 up-to-date publications highlighting BC’s supply chain uses. Transparency and traceability, information sharing, product anti-counterfeiting, and building trust are the major aspects propelling BC’s implementation in SCM. Further, we analyzed various applications of SCM in which BC can be used as a probable technology to secure all transactions. Then, we have highlighted open issues and research challenges for adopting BC technology in SCM that open the doors for beginners eager to start work in this amazing area.