Ranking of Important Indicators of Blockchain Technology for the Vegetable Oil Supply Chain

Abstract

There are four interconnected markets, i.e. oilseeds, crude oil, meal and edible oil, in the vegetable oil supply chain. Nowadays, emerging tools in context of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have critical role to develop the supply chain. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize actors' preferences for using blockchain technology in the vegetable oil supply chain. For this purpose, we applied the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. We interviewed 15 experts, including scientific specialists from adjacent fields and actors in the vegetable oil supply chain, in 2021, to determine the weight of the pairwise comparison matrix. This study evaluated the leading indicators of management improvement, performance improvement, data security, transparency, traceability and visibility, as well as their sub-indicators. The calculation of final weight revealed the most relevance of sub-indices, i.e. increasing inter-organizational trust, compatibility and secure data compatibility, with value of 0.467, 0.043 and 0.043, respectively. The rest of the indicators were also ranked as data immutability, close relationship with suppliers, degree of privacy, forecasting, strategic planning capabilities, reduction of lead time and doing the order on time, respectively. The lack of trust between circles and actors is thus the most crucial obstacle and the largest potential for the new chain in the current supply chain. More training and knowledge of supply chain players on emerging technologies should be put on the agenda to achieve optimal supply chain management. Our results also suggested solutions for advocating for the planning and development of the required infrastructure for the implementation of blockchain technology in Iran.

Keywords

• multi-criteria decision making
• transparency
• traceability
• visibility