A Systematic Literature Review of Blockchain-Based Traceability Solutions

Abstract

Blockchain technology shows great potential in providing object-related end-to-end traceability in complex multitiered supply networks. However, the first systematic literature reviews indicate the immaturity of current blockchain-based solutions and highlight difficulties in assessing their object traceability capabilities. Therefore, this paper provides a systematic literature review of blockchain-based traceability solutions and analyses their object-related mapping capabilities. As the systematic literature reveals, the vast majority of the identified traceability solutions deal with low-complexity architectures without the ability to map objects' compositional changes. Here, food and medical supply chains represent the most dominant domains. Supply chains in the automotive and manufacturing domain place the highest requirements for mapping object-related supply chain events. In this context, solutions incorporating the tokenisation of objects show the most advanced object-related mapping capabilities. However, the identified advanced solutions show limitations regarding their ability to map object deletions, aggregations, and disaggregations. Furthermore, current blockchain-based traceability solutions provide only limited validations based on industrial case studies.