Hub-blockchain: Unveiling the transparency paradigm in physical supply chains

This work presents a groundbreaking innovation in Supply Chain Management (SCM) by introducing the concept of "Hub-Blockchain". While the adoption of blockchain technology already brings transparency to supply chains, its full implementation can be financially burdensome for companies. In order to address this challenge, this research proposes a cost-effective solution where hubs are established to facilitate the storage, exchange, analysis, separation, sending, and distribution of data. These hubs also ensure equal access to data for all supply chain members. By implementing blockchain on these hubs, the approach significantly enhances supply chain transparency and optimizes its operations without necessitating any modifications to the existing data structure. To do so, we develop an optimization model that simultaneously designs the physical supply chain and its blockchain counterpart. The model aims to minimize total costs while maximizing transparency resulting from the adoption of blockchain technology. To effectively and optimally solve this multi-objective model, Fuzzy Goal Programming (FGP) approach is applied. Results demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of hub-blockchains in supply chain planning and in mitigating data traffic congestion. However, the results reveal that the hub-blockchain strategy faces a law of diminishing returns, that is, increasing the number of hub-blockchains may diminish the corresponding advantage.