Introduction:
As more and more people are getting used to shop online and on a global basis, logistics and supply chain management had to improve in the recent years. A few years ago, domestic deliveries needed 3-5 working days and global deliveries several weeks to reach its destination. Nowadays the logistics has build up such as good network, that domestic deliveries could be handled within 24 hours or less. Same-day-delivery could become the new standard of logistics as perishable products such as vegetables, milk products or medicine delivieries has become popular recently due to comfort reasons. But what about perishable products deliveries from foreign countries, which usually could take longer, how can they be handled more efficiently?
Scenario - An Example:
Imagine you own a supermarket and want to offer international fruits from around the world. Your problem it that your delivery could take many days and with every day passing this could lead your fruits to ripe, which customers won't buy anymore. Furthermore a delay in transport such as flight cancellation due to bad weather, strikes or traffic jams could make things even worse. Additionally to that statistic also show that containers sometimes get lost or cannot be allocated to a specific purchaser due to mistakes in the supply chain process and therefore this could also take couple of days too, to be solved.
The same use case could also be applied to the pharmacy products, which also often has a short preservability on their products and especially need to be kept cool at a certain temperature. How can those problems be solved?
SmartContainers - Offering A Solution Using The Blockchain:
SmartContainers, a currently ongoing project based in Switzerland has found some solution for those existing problems, by using the blockchain technology to their advantage. SmartContainers has successfully developed a cutting-edge container technology, which enables radiation reflection and heat protection of containers at the same time. With their new invented cooling technology, products are according to them about 5 times more efficient in energy storage for cooling in comparison with traditional containers. Furthermore their cooling technology enables the containers to fully charge themselves when stored in a cold storage or cooled truck load.
Now thanks to the blockchain technology, SmartContainers are fully able to integrate IoT sensors on their containers. This has on one hand side the advantage, that containers can be fully tracked and therefore not only ownership, contract management and customer invoice processes can be improved, but also lost containers can be found faster and easier. Richard Ettl, CEO of Smartcontainers thefore has stated, that blockchain technology will help them to "decentralize logistics and create autonomous containers – container 4.0."
5 Reasons Why SmartContainers Could Disrupting The Logistics Industries:
- Operative and growing company for pharmacy (SkyCell) and food (Food Guardians) deliveries acting worldwide
- Proven and thoroughly researched cutting edge container technology, giving SmartContainers advantages towards possible competitors
- IoT-sensors that will help monitoring containers worldwide, reducing lost containers or helping to find faster detours in cases of flight cancellations or possible strikes
- Autonomous handling of operations such as customer invoicing and a more efficient contract management
- Elimination of paper work and moving up to the digital cloud
2 Coins With Different Purposes:
SmartContainers will run 2 different kind of coins. Those are namely:
- SMARC Coins, which is a profit coin to scale SkyCell and FoodGuardians
- LOGI Coins, which is the currency to fuel the LOGI CHAIN ecosystem
With the currently ongoing tokensale, both coins can be obtained. SMARC Coins are settled at a price of 0.432$, while LOGI Coins are priced at 0.285$. The total hardcap for the SmartContainers project is set at 40 million USD. The tokensale will last until the 30th June 2018. Further information regarding the tokensale can be taken on their website https://smartcontainers.ch/en
My Opinion:
As expectations in logistics are nowadays very high, it is quite important for the logistics to improve continuously. With the help of blockchain technology and "Internet of Things", which will help tracking containers and fully autonomously managing operations, human errors can be minimized and supply chain processes can be accelerated, leading not only a greater profit margin for the companies, but also to a higher customer satisfaction overall. With an already working product and proven technology, SmartContainers seem to have great chances of disrupting the logistic industries with the blockchain technology. In my opinion the project is very solid and chances are high that SmartContainers will be successfull.
Further Information:
Want to know more about the SmartContainers project? Take a look at their official website and their whitepaper for more information. Also subscribe to their official communication channels to stay up to date. Any questions, feel free to comment below.
Website: https://smartcontainers.ch/en/
Whitepaper: https://smartcontainers.ch/en/assets/20180502_smartcontainers_whitepaper_v2.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SMARC_ICO
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Smart-Containers-157874458234951/
Telegram: https://t.me/smartcontainers
Bitcointalk ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3058528.0
My Bitcointalk Profile (Rano): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1609093
My ETH: 0xFc58f16Ab51A635fdb06b4Db14E59ad994884AD7