IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - May/June 2017 - 21
The Shipping News International trade requires an extensive network of intermediaries to build trust. According to a 2014 study by Maersk, for example, a shipment of refrigerated goods routed from East Africa to Europe required almost 30 intermediaries and over 200 communications before it reached its destination (ibm. co/2nHMapC). Despite all of those interactions, it's frequently difficult to know exactly where the goods in a given shipment are at any one time, or even if they are the right goods. According to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (tinyurl.com/ hdsdlh2), global supply-chain fraud in the food industry alone costs between $10 billion and $15 billion annually. The solution is to swap out all of those intermediaries for a shipping and supply-chain blockchain, an effort now underway. The immutable ledger would involve the entire supply chain so that the origin, status, processing, shipping and location of any particular item is always known by every member. Suddenly, not just the shipping process but the supply chain itself becomes transparent. This blockchain could largely eliminate fraud by introducing complete transparency from start to finish. "You could use the technology to identify the provenance of something, from its point of origin in a mine or a factory through different points of entry, different ports, different customs officials, etc.," Tapscott notes. "You can know that you're receiving what you initially ordered, that it came from where you thought it was coming from and that what you're receiving has arrived in a legal way." The value of the blockchain approach lies in the fact that it's not just transparent across an ecosystem but can create better vertical integration. Current approaches to supply-chain management only deal with a subset of the data. "You have the information generally from your business but you don't necessarily have the information from all the players in the supply chain because they're each dealing with multiple vendors and suppliers," McDermott says. "If everybody had a complete view, they could do a better job of optimizing how supply chains work, and that would eliminate a lot of inefficiencies." Your Mainframe Systems Management Just Won't Cut It Anymore! Wednesday, May 24 | 10 PT / Noon CT / 1 ET How to get it where it NEEDS to be Don't let your systems management approach derail your organization's success! In spite of decades of systems management experience, the operational imperatives of digital engagement require a different systems management approach. Are you there yet? FEATURING: G. Jay Lipovich Principal Product Manager BMC Join this webinar for a discussion of the characteristics of systems management approaches that enable digital strategies. Get a checklist for evaluating your systems management efforts and learn about steps you can take to up level your approach while making the work easier. Nick Pachnos Senior Director, Product Management BMC Register Today: webcasts.com/ibmsystemsmag sponsored advertising content ibmsystemsmag.com MAY/JUNE 2017 // 21