Blockchain Ledger for Transparent Shipment Pricing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems for tracking shipments do not provide farmers with transparent pricing information, leading to potential fraud along the supply chain and difficulties in determining the price paid to farmers.
Innovation Solution
A system that generates and shares information about shipments, including gross weight, factors, green weight, price per unit weight, and total price, among users in the supply chain, using devices and interfaces to input and approve data, and creates a ledger for transparency and traceability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If traditional shipment tracking systems are used, then the system complexity is low, but transparency of pricing information is insufficient leading to fraud potential
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments pricing information into distinct components (farm gate price, mill price, export price) and assigns them to different ledger entries. Each segment is tracked separately through the supply chain, allowing full transparency of how the final price is composed while maintaining manageable system complexity through modular data structure
Solution Approach 2:
A blockchain ledger acts as an intermediary layer between traditional shipment tracking systems and pricing information. The ledger captures and immutably stores pricing data from multiple sources (farmers, mills, exporters) without requiring complete system restructuring, thus improving transparency while adding only a specific layer of complexity
2Reliability
If detailed pricing information is shared across the supply chain, then fraud is reduced, but information security requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements continuous monitoring and verification of pricing information across all supply chain participants. Once pricing data is entered into the blockchain ledger, it remains continuously accessible and immutable, ensuring ongoing fraud prevention rather than periodic checks, while the continuous nature of the blockchain security model actually reduces overall security risks
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides feedback mechanisms where each supply chain participant can verify pricing information against the blockchain ledger. This cross-verification feedback loop detects inconsistencies and potential fraud attempts, enhancing reliability while the distributed verification actually reduces information security risks by making the system more resilient to attacks
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure describes, in part, systems and techniques for sharing shipment data. For instance, a user associated with a mill may input, into a device, a gross weight and a factor for a shipment. The device may then use the inputs to determine the green weight for the shipment as well as a total price that is to be paid to a producer of the shipment. Next, the device may then send data representing the information to a system. Using the data, the system may generate a ledger for the shipment. The system may then continue to receive data from other users included in the supply chain for the shipment and add additional information to the ledger. Additionally, the system may send the ledger to the other users so that all of the users in the supply chain may determine the current status of the shipment.