Blockchain in Textile and Clothing Supply Chains

Dear Everyone,

I hope you are all fine and healthy and you enjoy the nice weather in Sweden :)!

This is my first blog entry coming in a little bit late due to various reasons. But I am not going to bore you with these and will cut straight to the chase.

For the past weeks I have been researching about blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains. This research field has been incredibly interesting and challenging at the same time - keeping my brain busy with questioning existing conditions, behaviors and the industry in general.

To give you some background information about the research field: Blockchain is a relatively new invention by Satoshi Nakamoto and was introduced in 2008. Simplified it is a global public ledger that allows data to be stored and shared in an accessible and secure manner in a broad network, where trust is not necessarily existent, by means of different encryption mechanisms and mathematical functions. The technology was first introduced in the financing sector, in the context of Bitcoin, and has been widely adapted to various fields since. In the context of supply chain management, blockchain is i.a. used to make products during production stages traceable and to make a transparent supply chain feasible unlocking many advantages while also carrying challenges.

In my research project I am analyzing the status quo of blockchain in the textile and clothing industry by applying the approach of a systematic literature review. This process proved to be more difficult than anticipated since hardly any literature in this specific field exists. Therefore, the sample in review is comparably small for a systematic literature review. However, according to Pautasso (2013) the need for a literature review where the amount of published research as well as the amount of literature reviews are low can still be motivated in the context of identifying new research questions. Hence, the aim of my research project is to review commonalities and differences between the analyzed literature and appoint the status quo of blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains, yielding future research questions in this field as a result.

I hope you found this entry interesting and I was able to give you a small insight into the research field. If you are intrigued to know more, I am always happy to swap ideas and knowledge and discuss about this topic. I wish you all a wonderful day and a joyful and relaxing summertime :)!!

All the very best,

Laura

Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149