All the retail distribution centers infrastructure upgrades and cold storage solutions in the world won’t help product safety standards or compliance issues without collaboration along the supply chain.
This is where Glasschain, a compliance-as-a-service application from Salinas/Watsonville, CA-based Glassbit comes into play.
Using cloud-based IBM blockchain integration, Glasschain is a low-cost, low-commitment way for companies to achieve precise data control, high visibility, and rapid-fire compliance through an automatic “set-it-and-forget-it” solution.
Developments such as Glasschain have arisen in response to rising challenges for larger retailers and smaller suppliers to effectively tie their supply chains together. As real-time transparency becomes an important part of both regulation and consumer demand, there’s a significant need for analyzing inefficiencies and improving quality and traceability, which can’t be met by old models of closed-off, internal data systems.
Curt Sorkin, chief technical officer for Glassbit, believes deep domain knowledge and experience are necessary “to make something more than a hodgepodge of technical terms” or what he terms “brochureware.”
“Development needs to be fast and agile,” Sorkin insists. “Organizations need plug-and-play solutions, and we think the transition will favor providers who can get these connections up and running quickly—and this means a deep knowledge of both the retailer and supplier domains.”
For success, systems must be able to interact across the environment, with hard safety and security standards to prevent data breaches and other losses. Sorkin believes third-party solutions can offer focused and value-added solutions while leaving smaller companies free from the demands of dealing with complex infrastructure. The data is already out there; it just needs to be connected throughout the supply chain.
This is multi-part feature on retail distribution centers adapted from the January/February 2020 issue of Produce Blueprints.
