TechRepublic’s Dan Patterson met with Samantha Radocchia, co-founder and chief marketing officer at blockchain and IoT technology company Chronicled, to discuss how blockchain, IoT, and machine learning are strengthening supply chain management.

These technologies affect every part of the supply chain, starting from the beginning, Radocchia explained. The process starts by creating an identity for an object to track its movement throughout the supply chain. Once the object is identified, anti-counterfeiting and product authentication solutions can be implemented.

Other use cases for these technologies in supply chain management is to ensure secure transfers of custody. Radocchia explained how the gold supply chain uses blockchain to track gold from the mine to the vault. It begins by creating a secure identifier on the gold, registering it on blockchain, then registering the event any time the gold changes custody. Each time the gold changes hands, the identifier is scanned with a mobile device, signed with a fingerprint, then that event is registered with blockchain.

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Blockchain is a ledger technology. “It’s not really great at storing large amounts of data, or metadata, but it is very good at confirming or registering an identity, an event, or timestamp,” she said.

Radocchia recommends that companies new to adopting blockchain use trusted blockchain providers. “There’s a lot of benefits of the technology, anywhere from data visibility, process enhancement, and demand management for the supply chain industry,” she said,

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