BlockRTI is a system that enables the members of a supply chain network to better track the movement and exchange of costly Returnable Transport Items such as shipment containers, inside the network.
The system has been shown to reduce the number of RTIs that go missing during the operation of the supply chain, to increase the speed at which issues are resolved and to promote trust between supply chain participants. This is made possible because it builds a transparent, tamper-resistant history of all RTI transactions, which are open to auditing by any authorized member of the supply chain. It also offers real-time visibility into the status of all RTIs registered on the system.
BlockRTI was designed and built on Hyperledger Sawtooth, an open source Distributed Ledger Technology framework. Sawtooth makes it possible to develop permissioned blockchain networks which are highly reliable while keeping development costs low because several of the building blocks which are needed for such a use case are provided by the framework.
To develop and test the system we worked closely with MA S.r.l., an Italian multinational company that operates 25 metal automotive component factories around the world and is a division of CLN, a group that generated 1.12 Billion Euro in revenues in 2020. MA piloted the system across its factories in three European countries and was able to consolidate the inventory of returnable flat pack containers moving between those locations within three weeks.
The R&D work that went into developing the BlockRTI system was co-financed by AVANGARD, a 22 million Euro collaborative project (Horizon 2020) researching the future of manufacturing, in which Ideas Forward and MA are partners.
