Blockchain Technology for Information Sharing and Coordination to Mitigate Bullwhip Effect in Service Supply Chains

Abstract

Supply chain management experiences inefficiencies due to several reasons, such as the lack of information sharing and coordination among supply chain participants. Moreover, these participants may not share their information with other parties in the supply chain due to trust issues and considering such information as sensitive asset. This behavior may hinder the supply chain efficiency and motivate the occurrence of bullwhip effect (BWE). This phenomenon has been intensively investigated in manufacturing industries. In addition, information sharing has been considered the main remedy to eliminate BWE in literature. However, few attempts examined the effect of information sharing in reducing this phenomenon in service supply chain (SSC). Digitalization and computerization have the potential to convert and reshape the supply chains in all kind of businesses and improve the coordination among supply chain partners by exchanging real-time information. Blockchain as a disruptive technology has many distinct features like disintermediation and decentralization that provide integrity, visibility and security for the supply chain. To bridge this gap, this paper aims at proposing a blockchain architecture to mitigate BWE in SSC by improving end-to-end visibility among supply chain partners through sharing backlog information. The proposed supply chain-based blockchain enables SSC partners to share securely and transparent backlog information mitigating thus BWE.KeywordsDigitalizationBlockchain technologyInformation sharingBullwhip effect (BWE)Demand amplificationService supply chain (SSC)