Secure rural supply chain management using low cost paper watermarking

Abstract

Supply chain systems in rural developing regions are extremely fragile and are vulnerable to a wide range of security threats including theft, fraud and counterfeit goods. In this paper, we propose the design of a secure, low cost supply chain management system that leverages cheap cellphones and a low-cost paper watermarking system that can authenticate and verify the integrity of goods in a supply chain. Unlike many sophisticated solutions which have deployment problems due to the harsh ground realities in rural regions, our system is easy to use, deploy and does not require significant changes to the existing operational model. In addition, our system relies only on paper and cellphones, both of which are ubiquitously used in rural developing regions.