Now, more than ever, with the existence of the new blockchain technology, smart contracts started its revolution. Although the industry has been practices smart contracts using blockchain technology, limited study available on how blockchain technology contributes to Halal supply chain management. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to review the roles, promises and benefits of smart contracts based on blockchain technology for Halal supply chain management applications. An extensive literature exploration is conducted to reveal the existing literature on smart contracts using blockchain technology. The authors have faith in that the findings in this chapter can be used as a solid base for the researchers and practitioners of smart contracts in Halal supply chain management.
TopIntroduction
The technologies and its advancement have brought many solutions to various complex aspects of our life. Blockchain technology is a new revolution in the era of technology that called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Tieman and Darun 2017). The basic idea behind this technology is that, its “an open, distributed ledger that stores transactions between two parties on distributed servers located in different places around the world and this make it more secure and trustable (Iansiti and Lakhani 2017, Tapscott and Tapscott 2017). The blockchain system has the ability to improve traceability and the transparency of the supply chain operations (Tieman et al., 2019). Hence, Blockchain technology had provided solutions and had enormous values in streamlining agreements, transactions and industry workflows inside and among the organizations. For instance, varied number of industries such as energy sector, robotics systems industries, finance, medical, insurance and supply chain can potentially apply this technology and provide solutions to overcome challenges and being greater benefits to all these sectors (Burger, Kuhlmann et al. 2016, Engerati 2017) (Gatteschi, Lamberti et al. 2018).
In the energy sector, Blockchain technologies has confirmed its great potentials to enhance the existing processes and practices in this field. Blockchain technologies can offer a great benefits to this industry in various ways such as: reduce costs, enhance energy security and foster sustainability (Andoni, Robu et al. 2019). Similarly, Blockchain technologies shows its potentials and promises in the robotic systems industries. (Ferrer 2018, Lopes and Alexandre 2018, Afanasyev, Kolotov et al. 2019, Lopes, Alexandre et al. 2019) emphasized the benefits and outcomes of the integration of Blockchain and robotic systems whereby it will offer an essential capabilities to enable the operation of robotic swam systems, rise the efficiency between agents.
Other field and sectors such as business sector, Blockchain technologies has offered numerous types of applications to facilitate the operations and business processes. (Andoni, Robu et al. 2019) summarized those applications as a use cases by Blockchain technologies in the business field. Billing, Sales and marketing, Trading and market, Automations, Smart grid applications, and Grid Management are among the potential applications in the field of business offered by Blockchain technologies (Grewal-Carr V 2016, Arsenjev, Baskakov et al. 2019)
On the other hand, with the invention of smart contracts within the Blockchain technology, the overall Supply Chain Management (SCM) will become more efficient as well as the transaction and traceability will be better in the supply chain process (Catallini 2017, Law 2017). To elaborate this, Blockchain offers capabilities such as tamper data saved in Blockchain, providing a single source of the truth, and smart contracts that automatically execute agreement terms. In combination, these capabilities promote the supply chain traceability, trust and veracity that are vital to the industry’s future competitiveness (Casey and Vigna 2018) .
Likewise, Tieman and Darun (2017) argued that Halal Supply Chains Management (HSCM) are susceptible and due that becomes more difficult to design, manage and optimize. As a result, a combination of Blockchain technology and smart contracts that help in transparency is needed to ensure trust, reputation and originality of Halal supply chains products. Thus, this study aims to provide a comprehensive review on the role, benefits, and promises of utilizing the smart contracts in the domains of SCM, and HSCM.
Moreover, to the best of our awareness, till date, there has been no review study specifically focused on the implementation impact of the smart contract on the SCM and HSCM. Hence, this chapter will add new value to the intended researchers and practitioners by providing a clear view and critical discussion on smarts contracts in term of its roles and benefits to the HSCM.