A Blockchain-Enabled Smart Contract Architecture for Enhancing Transparency, Traceability, and Trust in Global Supply Chain Management

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Authors: Naim Ayadi, Syed Arshad Hussain, Arif R. Deen, Asadullah Ullah, Dil Nawaz Hakro, Muhammad Babar, Mushtaque Ali Jariko, Alya Al Farsi, Akhtar Hussain
Cited by: 2
References: 27

Abstract

There is diminished transparency, fragmented information exchange, and lack of trust among geographically dispersed stakeholders, which increasingly challenge global supply chains. The classic centralized systems of supply chain management are not always capable of being able to offer real-time traceability and data integrity which is dependable and effective in contract enforcement. The proposed study is a blockchain-based smart contract design that is focused on ensuring increased transparency, traceability and trust in global supply chain management. The suggested framework will combine automated smart contracts, cryptographic provenance tracking, permissioned blockchain consensus, and a decentralized trust score evaluation mechanism to overcome some of the major operation and governance challenges. A simulated assessment with a multi-tier global supply chain setting of 15 blockchain nodes and 12,000 transactions was performed through experimentation. The findings show that the proposed system attained an average transaction delay of 210 ms, which is very low compared to centralized systems (520 ms), with throughput being raised to 120 transactions per minute. End-to-end traceability performance also improved significantly, with a reduction in trace-back time to 8 s compared with 95s this represents a 100% tampering detection rate. The consensus mechanism ensured that the ledger integrity failed only at a rate of less than 1.1%, even when more than 30% of nodes were faulty. Risk-wise, the trust evaluation algorithm dynamically enhanced reliable supplier scores up to 12%, which facilitated the selection of reliable partners. On the whole, the results prove that smart contracts based on blockchains can drastically enhance the efficiency of operations, data integrity, and confidence in global supply chains, with the platform capable of providing a resilient and scalable backbone for the future supply chain management model.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Blockchain Technology Applications and Security Advanced Technologies in Various Fields Supply Chain Resilience and Risk Management

Publication details

Journal / source
Computers
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
15
Issue
3
Pages
198–198
Publication date
22 March 2026
Language
EN