Conference Agenda

Supply chain management faces challenges like ensuring product information integrity and managing trust between upstream and downstream enterprises. Although blockchain technology offers solutions, obstacles remain in meeting businesses' needs. E-commerce platforms have become primary providers of blockchain technology, offering services to stakeholders. This study focuses on blockchain anti-counterfeiting traceability technology services promoted by an e-commerce platform. It examines the optimal incentive mechanism for adopting blockchain traceability technology from brand owners' and e-commerce platforms' perspectives. The research establishes a two-stage decision-making game model for blockchain implementation cost modes under wholesale or agency contract mechanisms. Findings show that the revenue-sharing model under wholesale contracts benefits brand owners, while the cost-sharing model under agency contracts favors e-commerce platforms. This study provides practical strategies for promoting and leveraging blockchain traceability technology effectively.

The advancement of the circular economy necessitates effective reverse supply chain management, a key factor in maximizing resource use and minimizing waste. However, challenges such as information opacity, stakeholder misalignment, regulatory discrepancies, and recycling uncertainties hinder progress. This study introduces a conceptual framework for reverse supply chain information systems, integrating blockchain technology and digital product passports (DPP). These tools enable decentralized data management, ensuring privacy and traceability. We propose an innovative multi-layer framework, integrating blockchain with DPP, tailored to the unique needs of reverse supply chains. This framework bridges the gap between forward and reverse supply chains, promoting transparency and collaboration among various stakeholders, including industry, government, academia, and consumers. Demonstrating its practical application, we present a use case from the automotive industry, highlighting the framework's potential to improve information flow in reverse supply chains, facilitate end-of-life product recovery, and optimize resource utilization—key steps towards achieving a circular economy.

Supply chain disruptions caused by global pandemic, geopolitical tensions and trade wars in recent years resulted in supply uncertainties. Creating commons which is a set of pooled resources for the product, funds, or information flows in supply chains can help build resilience and efficiency for supply chains to deal with uncertainties. On the other hand, blockchain technology presents useful features such as immutability, transparency, and visibility that can boost creating and enhancing commons capabilities in supply chains. For example, information sharing via smart contracts in across-company commons or at the macro level for enhancing security and efficiency in government-sponsored industrial commons can be beneficial. Thus, in this study, we aim to understand the blockchain potential in creating and enhancing commons in supply chains by applying a thematic analysis of the relevant literature and proposing a conceptual framework to guide research and practice.

Achieving net-zero is one of the most challenging goals of our time. Renewable energy (RE) needs to be integrated on a large scale in energy supply chains. This requires technical and non-technical competences, known as dynamic capabilities. The most promising technology for RE integration in energy supply chains is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yet, the literature on AI- renewable energy supply chains (RESC) is still in its infancy. A multiple case study examines how AI impacts RESC, identifying the AI-driven dynamic capabilities for effective RE integration in energy supply chains. We examine which capabilities to develop when RESC is realized via AI. Supply chain predictability and optimization and related sensing and seizing capabilities are core benefits and need to be developed when implementing an AI-driven RESC.

This project is supported by the FARI-AI for the Common Good Institute (ULB-VUB), financed by the EU and the Brussels Capital Region (Innoviris and Paradigm).