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Potential benefits of utilizing blockchain-smart contracts technologies are relatively known for improving SN visibility and traceability. However, utilization of blockchain and smart contracts in integration with Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) infrastructures of supply networks (SN) partners for advanced business intelligence (BI) and inter-company collaboration is an immature research field. This study investigates how blockchain and smart contracts can complement existing ERP foundations of SN partners for advanced BI and collaborative reporting based on a conceptual comparative study. After identifying main configuration dimensions of privacy setting (public/private/consortium), smart contract utilization for business logic implementation (full/none) and degree of transactional data decentralization (full/only critical data/none), 18 deployment scenarios are developed for advanced SN collaboration. Scenarios are then analyzed, mapped with SN collaboration maturity stages, and assessed in terms of various critical SN capabilities such as visibility, traceability, flexibility and scalability. Study is unique in providing a comprehensive treatment of the topic and mappings offered from supply network management (SNM) perspective. Findings reveal that use of blockchain technologies and smart contracts enhances critical SN capabilities and supports higher levels of collaboration maturity as compared to the baseline ERP-centric integration scenario. Some deployment scenarios support collaborative settings in make-to-order production environments, whereas others embrace relatively larger networks not as collaborative, targeting repetitive production settings.
Akyüz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.