Research Area:  Blockchain Technology

Abstract:

The literature on blockchain technology in operations and supply chain management falls short in elaborating salient blockchain architectural features. Most often, it attempts to capture the difference between the public, private and consortium blockchain systems. To advance our knowledge of this distributed technology and help in a better understanding of its various applications, we focus on the consensus algorithms deployed within blockchain systems. We introduce the Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), Proof of Authority (PoA) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). Our paper demonstrates that many blockchain architectures and new supply chain configurations can emerge with the change in the blockchain consensus mechanism. We focus on the healthcare supply chain, one of the most appealing use cases for blockchain, to outline the architecture of state-of-the-art blockchain systems. This research is a step forwards illustrating the significant change in the concepts and practices towards fully decentralised supply chains.

Keywords:  

Author(s) Name:  Ghassan Al-Sumaidaee, Rami Alkhudary, Zeljko Zilic & Pierre Féniès

Publisher name:  Springer

DOI:  10.1007/978-3-030-96154-1_7

Volume Information:  pp 135–150

Paper Link:   https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-96154-1_7