Distributed Ledger Technologies in Supply Chain Security Management: A Comprehensive Survey

TLDR

Supply chains suffer from bottlenecks such as the bullwhip effect, high inventory, and restrictive data flows, driving costs and compromising product quality, while distributed ledger technologies promise to reduce these issues through transparency, decentralization, and improved data management. This article reviews 111 public‑domain studies on DLT in supply chain security management, serving as a roadmap for researchers to understand digital technology integration. The authors clustered the studies using descriptors of trustworthiness—immutability, transparency, traceability, and integrity—to analyze DLT efficacy.

Abstract

Supply chains (SC) present performance bottlenecks that contribute to a high level of costs, infiltration of product quality, and impact productivity. Examples of such inhibitors include the bullwhip effect, new product lines, high inventory, and restrictive data flows. These bottlenecks can force manufacturers to source more raw materials and increase production significantly. Also, restrictive data flow in a complex global SC network generally slows down the movement of goods and services. The use of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) in SC management (SCM) demonstrates the potentials to reduce these bottlenecks through transparency, decentralization, and optimizations in data management. These technologies promise to enhance the trustworthiness of entities within the SC, ensure the accuracy of data-driven operations, and enable existing SCM processes to migrate from a linear to a fully circular economy. This article presents a comprehensive review of 111 articles published in the public domain in the use and efficacy of DLT in SC. It acts as a roadmap for current and future researchers who focus on SC security management to better understand the integration of digital technologies such as DLT. We clustered these articles using standard descriptors linked to trustworthiness, namely, immutability, transparency, traceability, and integrity.