Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1275152
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 Johnson: And these two areas—logis- tics and traceability—come together to provide some protection against counterfeits? Lam: They kind of solve their own problem. A logistics-type of supply chain helps a great deal in terms of the process of moving products from one place to another globally. Differ- ent from the TradeLens focus on ocean carriers, internally, we also move things through air and land, and there are a lot of processes—such as cus- toms declaration processes—that we need to handle manually. With blockchain, we will be able to reduce cycle time and costs in terms of that, and that solves a logistics problem. For traceability of provenance, it solves other problems like quality recall issues, authenti- cation of product traceability, or whether it's really coming from a certain supplier, that type of thing. In various areas, we solve differ- ent things when you apply blocking into each case. It depends on the use case you have. Begue: Invoices in logistic processes may look trivial, but there are inefficiencies associated with the manual aspect which create disputes. For example, if you have 10% of your transpor- tation invoices being disputed, it could repre- sent a fair amount of payment being disputed. Now, when you have a record of what hap- pened, and which all parties trust, you can resolve these disputes much faster. Johnson: Are there some examples that we might be able to talk about for the electron- ics supply chain where this has made a differ- ence? Begue: We use it because we're service provid- ers for our clients' IT needs. The invoice that the client receives at the end of the month is not one or 10 lines; it's hundreds of lines for different types of services—reset that server, do this, do that. If even a relatively small per- centage was an object of dispute, or the par- ties could not recognize the service, it would Johnson: This is going to need collaboration. If you can't get collaboration in front of you and behind you in the supply chain, that leaves you effectively standalone. Your supply chain isn't ready for something like this yet. Begue: Correct. Johnson: Are there any portion of the electron- ics supply chain that seems to be driving the adoption of this technology? Begue: We see a couple of big buckets. There's one big bucket around international shipping. We do a lot of work with ocean freight—not that relevant for electronics, but inside our supply chain, there is a fair amount of work around air shipment. Freight forwarding, air shipment, customs declaration, all of that is one big bucket. The other big bucket is more around what Michelle is driving regarding the provenance or validation of origination of the components and being able to go back for a computer system that has been in use for a period of time. Where was that sub-assembly coming from? Is it valid? Is it being owned by a customer who should own it? It's reconcilia- tion between the product and the client. Lam: In our internal supply chain for our hard- ware system, we focus on these two areas: supply chain in terms of logistics and supply chain for electronics in terms of traceability of provenance.