Blockchain Service Layer for ERP data interoperability among multiple supply chain stakeholders
Vangelis Malamas, Thomas K. Dasaklis, Theodore G. Voutsinas, Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou · 2023
Companies in the supply chain recognize Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software as an indispensable component of their businesses that significantly helps with planning, decision-making, and cost reductions. However, despite the benefits of ERP, the interaction between supply chain stakeholders with varying and even contradictory security and privacy requirements could be challenging. In addition, incorporating a cross-domain access control might be hard because parties may require different access levels for information maintained outside their own ERP. In this work, we propose a blockchain architecture that acts as a service layer on top of existing ERP systems to achieve fine-grained intra- and cross-domain access control. A private blockchain is combined with four fully functional Smart Contracts to enable access control and trust management services, a data handler service, ensuring data integrity for both insiders and outsiders, and an audit mechanism.