Temco: Blockchain Powered Supply Chain Platform
Have you ever bought something from an online store and then wait for days for your items to arrive but then found out that it was broken? Who's at fault at this? The seller told you that s/he did everything to make sure it covered well but the delivery service also told you that they accept just like what the sender give them. Who can you ask for responsibility on that? More importantly, how can we prove that?
It is definitely hard to do so. The current supply chain system in the status quo, regardless of what kind of things got delivered, is disconnected, fragmented and lacking transparency that makes it almost impossible to track and see how's your product condition in real time. Luckily, Temco might help everybody to create a (way) better supply chain platform that can benefit every stakeholder in the business. How does that happens and why this project is interesting?
That's the topic that we're going to discuss in this article. Without further ado, happy reading!
The Status Quo of the Supply Chain Management
A supply chain is very important in business. Especially in the current era, where the internet can connect almost everything and changes the way we live and what we want. Add that with blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and you can see a demand for a transparent, fast and reliable platform for almost everything. When we talked about supply chain management and practice, sadly, it is still far from those ideals values that we hold. The supply chain in almost every business is very far from transparency and reliability.
Temco gave us an insight into the current major problem in the supply chain platform on their whitepaper. At 2017, there is a major problem of food contamination that happened while it was being delivered to the customer. The food that was sent by the delivery service was contaminated at some point in the delivery process, but there is no way government, the sender or other parties who wanted to find the reason to find at which point and why such contamination happens in the first place. This case, in turn, makes the customer feel very uneasy. How can they trust the sender or delivery service after this happens?
It is not finished yet. The problem in the supply chain industry become much worse because there is no way for the customer to track their items independently with any details that they wanted. Most of the time, delivery services or supply chain management only provide an update of where your item is at a certain time, without additional information such as the condition. Because of this, it is almost impossible to know at which point the items got contaminated or broken and it is hard to find out who's really responsible for those faults. And because of this, it is difficult to prevent such thing from happening again. There might be a solution, but is it effective? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Some providers have tried to build a supply chain management system for their products, but it is only built for that sole purpose only. There are no options for other companies to use that, or they have to spend some money to buy the rights to apply the solution in their own environment which is pretty costly especially for SMEs. But still, there is no single, connected and easy to use platform that is transparent enough and can be used by everybody on the business. Furthermore, there is still no standard and the technological breakthrough is still low in that field. More or less, they'll create the same supply chain environment where it is hard for a customer to track their items, difficult to find out where it goes wrong, and rely too much on paperwork that doesn't provide the required transparency.
Temco in Action
Amid the problems in the current supply chain management, Temco aims to revolutionize it and provide the platform that can be used by everybody. Regardless of whether you're a customer or delivery provider, even if you're running your own business, you can use Temco. Btw, if you think Temco is building on Ethereum blockchain just like any mediocre new crypto project out there, then you're wrong. In fact, Temco used RSK Bitcoin smart contract which means they're using the Bitcoin blockchain. Pretty interesting, isn't it?
So how do Temco works? You can read the details on the white paper, so I'll just give you a brief review on how this platform works. Basically, Temco will provide us with at least two things, first the blockchain and its smart contracts, and the other is the infrastructure to enable real-time tracking of a product. Data of those tracking will be sent to the blockchain and therefore you can see it using Temco apps.
Every package or items that are sent will be equipped with some kind of tracking device and QR code. The delivery worker will update the status of this package by simply scanning the QR code and send the details to the cloud/blockchain. Therefore, it is much simpler and quicker than using the regular paperwork. I honestly think this is a definitely great breakthrough that can decrease the cost of delivery services. You don't have to buy paper, or ink as many like before, what you need are only a computer and a smartphone.
In another word, Temco will provide the platform while other business, and customers, including you, will be able to use it as soon as it is ready. This brings a lot of benefits for the provider and customers too. For example, any small and medium business who's just about to start their business or still trying to run their business can use their capital to fund other developments, rather than building the supply chain platform. It could save a lot of time and money, while at the same time help them to focus on developing their product.
On the other hand, a customer will enjoy full transparency and they can always check the delivery process in real time, therefore there won't be any trust issues. In case there is a problem on the delivery, it is relatively easy to pinpoint at which process the delivery goes wrong, therefore there will be a clear basis on judging who's at fault. Because of that, creating and proposing a solution for the problems will be much quicker and effective because the problem is correctly identified.
Aside from those benefits above, local producers who don't have their own warehouse will also get benefits from Temco. They can choose to store their products in a warehouse which support Temco so that they can enjoy a modern warehouse management with a decent infrastructure and apps to monitor their product condition in real time. Of course, they can choose to manage the product on their own and use Temco platform when they send it to the customers.
Bottom Line
There are a lot of other benefits and details on how Temco works on the whitepaper, I highly recommended you guys to read it because the description is quite great and very understandable. From my point of view, even if there is another project that aims to do this, but their solution is not quite comprehensive and still lack MVP in real life, while Temco idea has been applied in Nenia demonstration (read on WP!). It's cool, and very interesting when you can see not only the location of your items but their temperature, condition and so on. And while most of the benefits I outlined above are coming from a customer point of view, Temco brings many benefits for another stakeholder which you can see in details on the white paper. So, don't forget to read it!
Here are the links that you should check:
Temco Website: https://www.temco.io/
Temco Whitepaper: https://www.temco.io/templates/temco_whitepaper_en.pdf
Disclaimer
This article is not a financial recommendation. The author, Temco and other parties mentioned in this article is a separate entity. The author writes this article based on his own understanding of Temco. Readers should read the original document of Temco by themselves. The author shouldn't be responsible for any actions taken by the readers, including but not limited to: joining the Temco bounty program, participate in the Temco token sale, and etc.
The author write this article for potential reward of Temco tokens. I have a profile on Bitcointalk (joniboini) and one of the ETH address that I use (for the purpose of writing this article) is 0xf17805ef5e7b449b445356f8745eaf6a5b8cb314.