It's not an end-all for supply chains, but that doesn't make it useless. It still prevents forgery of old records. If someone signs something, they can't later go back and change it or claim they didn't.
Re:How Blockchain Works
by abraham_lincoln on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @01:21PM
(#18078185)
Have you worked in manufacturing with ERP systems and BoM transactions?
I could see how this would be useful for medical device manufacturing, especially something like a pacemaker.
Indeed I did. Thing is, I see how blockchain could help existing processes. I just don't see the revolution yet. Which puzzles me, since on the one side I see the potential but on the other hand I still fail to see a real use case. And that introgues me quite a lot.
First, for blockchain to work you need trustable sources. Problem is, when the aource is trustworthy, what added benefit comes from a blockchain?
Second, having a, theoretically uninterrupted blockchain from the first raw material to, say, a car would provide way to much insight into supply chains. I pretty sure companies do not want that.
Finally, and that is IMHO the haedest point to practically solve, you need to make 100 percent sure that the physical and information flow in your supply chain are never ever seperated. One single separation and your whole blockchain is worthless. And that risk is so incredibly high in the real world it's almost laughable. So, to make sure a given blockchain matches the physical product you need a trustworthy party to assure that. And then, what value does blockchain add?
Someday someone a lot smarter than me will find a use case. At which I will say how damn obvious it is.