Everything you purchase, from a chocolate bar to a new car, is the end result of a massive, international supply chain, bringing the different elements of the end product together from the producers to the end customer.
Without supply chains, the global economy would come to a halt: they are the arteries and veins that keep the global economy ticking.
These are the thoughts from Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen, Head of Global Trade & Supply Chains at the IOTA Foundation.
According to him, these arteries aren’t as healthy as they could be:
“There is congestion and delays, and data sharing between actors is sparse and siloed. Inefficiencies, inequalities and lack of transparency all mean that global trade is sluggish, slow and in dire need of emergency health overhaul”.
Distributed ledger technology, and IOTA in particular, has initiated the transformation of supply chain management.
Munch Lund-Nielsen believes that providing the backbone for trusted data sharing in complex supply chains will revitalize supply chains, making them more efficient, more equitable and more transparent, ensuring a healthier, more robust and more agile economy.
The impact could be measured directly in global GDP growth.
The Tangle – IOTA’s answer to the blockchain – is the only distributed ledger technology that can be scaled globally to give nearly real-time feedback on billions of transactions, and that does not charge transaction fees.
According to Munch Lund-Nielsen, this unique, open source solution with real-time data and no-cost transactions improves the health of supply chains in the form of better logistics planning, improved inventory planning, increased accessibility for all, faster export/import processes, smarter use of resources, energy savings and other economic benefits.
“For example, if we just focus on how IOTA enables masses of data to be shared in real time: this will revolutionize previously reactive, non-predictive and cumbersome aspects of risk management and inventory management”.
Rather than solely analyzing past data for stock management and inventory distribution, users can get real-time data on direct sales to end consumers and trigger replenishment activities down the supply chain.
Munch Lund-Nielsen says that partnerships with companies like Zebra Technologies will bring trusted data from the edge of supply chains to producers and distributors in the middle.
The end goals are more transparency and better data to make the entire ecosystem more agile and less wasteful.
Trust in the integrity of data is also a ‘health benefit’ of IOTA: With masses of data moving around the world from device to device, we have to be able to trust it every step of the way.
“With IOTA technology, we don’t have to trade security and privacy for data transparency”, says Munch Lund-Nielsen.
“Whether it’s the encryption principles behind the Tangle or the additional standards and flexibility of IOTA’s Identity Framework, or important new projects such as Alvarium, a simulated Data Confidence Fabric developed in partnership with Dell Technologies, trust and security are at the heart of IOTA”.
According to him, this all makes IOTA the key to healthier, smarter and more secure supply chains – which makes the global economy healthier, too.
This is the second part of a two-part article. You can read the first part here.
