Supply Chain Promise to Pay using SMART Contracts

Inspiration

Traditionally, we are accustomed to view supply chain and finance as two independent business functions. In one way or the other, financial transactions are invoked by supply chain activities which creates a strong bond in their functions. However, the guarantees made during supply chain performance does not automatically translate to a financial transaction.
Air cargo industry, no exception, has taken greater strides in bringing supply chain visibility but the disconnect between supply chain promise and automated disbursement & repayment of finance still looms large. From the supply chain side, we have the following issues: • Complete visibility of shipment condition at piece level in transportation • Trust & Reliability • Transparency of shipment service promises being met throughout the journey.

In terms of finance, the process predominantly revolves around tedious & cumbersome manual activities and delayed completion of transactions impacting company’s bottom line. This is due to a heavy reliance on operational activities for performing financial transactions and the silo functioning of departments does not cascade the supply chain guarantee to financial department resulting in overall reduction in customer experience.

With the chosen industry problem, we address the following challenges posed in this Hackathon. • Special cargo validation • Walk-in customer payment • Cargo iQ Challenge • AWS Challenge • Open

What it does

Our solution is the confluence of 2 revolutionary technologies – Smart Contracts & Internet of Things (IoT) coupled with ONE record data sharing standards. This solution approach is aimed towards time-sensitive pharmaceutical shipments with temperature stipulation as a contractual condition.

Solution depicts the creation, monitoring & execution of self-executing ‘Smart Contracts’ in air cargo transportation process, where the terms of contractual agreement are programmed to be invoked in a self-executable manner. This contract with its inherent immutability and distributed nature, suffices the customers need of compliance, standardisation, trust, transparency, accountability & automated disbursement & repayment across the supply chain especially when dealing with time-sensitive pharmaceutical shipments.

Solution empowers the customer to opt for varied service level guarantees at the time of booking. The contractual stipulations (such as temperature monitoring), as part of chosen service levels, along with shipment information are digitally stored in a unit using ONE record data standards, which is subsequently monitored automatically throughout the shipment lifecycle at a piece level. During contract creation time, the airline also provides the details of necessary shipment declaration documentation to be prepared by the customer either physically or digitally for the chosen product and service.

Our solution addresses the monitoring of temperature stipulation as soon the shipment piece is tagged with the airline provided sensor device and the IoT data emission is exposed to the ONE record server. The airline continues to publish this information throughout the shipment lifecycle and the data integrity and visibility is shared with the customer & other subscribers instantaneously.

From the invoicing side, solution is equipped to support multiple payment options like Debit card, Credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. Customer can choose preferred payment option and solution is seamlessly integrated with widely used payment gateways. At the time of receiving shipment, airlines block the contracted shipment price and at the end of shipment lifecycle, utilizing the self-executable contracts with coded rules, airlines can automate the payment transactions, thereby settling the authorized payment or initiate shipment charges refund based on non-conformance of contract stipulations. This ensures payment and if any, refunds are managed efficiently with transparency.

In summary, all actions across the supply chain realm are monitored using the sequence of block units encompassed by ‘Smart Contract’ providing the customer the needed transparency and seamless automated cargo value chain process.

How we built it

This is an Angular solution built using Java Springboot. The shipments details are integrated with NE: ONE record server which is deployed in AWS Cloud.

The application uses IoT device Object and the data gets stored in Sensor Object. The shipment record creation uses the Waybill and Shipment objects. Sensor data is integrated with AWS SQS and the trigger associated Lambda function updates ONE Record server.

The application transactions are verified using ONE Record Playground which helps in creating a single version of truth.

APIs used:

ONE Record Ontology via Java API Library link More open source Java utility APIs to be used (e.g. Easy REST API, Maps API, etc). We have also built & deployed couple of Microservices – Token Generation, Authentication, shipment creation. The project required API library dependencies are listed in the project configuration files which is published on GitHub.

Challenges we ran into

  • JSON LD conversion to POJO Object took considerable time.
  • Couple of times the team encountered downtime of ONE Record server due to resource 
      limitations.
  • Capturing an IoT readings against a sensor will always hold the latest reading
  • Reusability of IoT devices as per ONE record data model

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Ability to successfully create various logistics objects in ONE Record server and use in our solution
  • Ability to create sensor logistics object using AWS Lambda function in ONE Record server
  • Enabling live shipment monitoring through Google Maps and automated execution of SMART 
     Contracts and Payments.

What we learned

  • Understanding the Logistics Object and links 
  • Conversion of POJO to JSON LD and vice versa. 
  • Configuration of ONE Record server in AWS Cloud 
  • We encountered few complications while capturing IoT measurement data and we circumvented 
     this problem by patching sensor information always. 
  • Configuring AWS SQS for Sensor Information.

What's next for Supply Chain Promise to Pay using SMART Contracts

We feel this solution can add value to the players in air cargo ecosystem. This brings in needed compliance, standardization, trust, transparency and accountability in the overall process.

Demo URL

  • [Shipment Capture](http://ec2-18-234-144-118.compute-1.amazonaws.com/)
  • [Live Shipment Monitoring](http://ec2-3-95-57-88.compute-1.amazonaws.com/)