In a nice day, you come to the supermarket, hold in your hand a pack of tomatoes. The succulent tomatoes look tasty with green leaves promising a good meal for your dinner. But, have you ever tried to get the address of the farm grew up the fresh and tasty tomatoes in your basket? Does it adapt the requirements of food standards? Have ever you questioned about what it says in the food labels is true? Although we are in the Information Age when your mind is flooded with the news from all around the globe, sometimes you face a lot of challenges to answer the simple given questions. But what is the root cause?
- Main challenges of tracking provenance.
Before reaching the end consumer, goods come across a long journey through a lot of factors. In each end-point of this journey, each retailer, each manufacturer has their own system with the different way of storing, tracking and circulating data. For example, the storage facility is running a system made by company A, the transporter is controlling the data management system by the product of company B. The compatibility in those centralized systems is not valued in its level of importance. Otherwise, the difference of specific progress makes the synchronization between two systems is impossible. If someone would dedicate their time to draw the picture of this product life-cycle from birth-to-death, they must dedicate an enormous amount of time with the huge workload to overcome a lot of obstacles in gathering, classifying and accumulating essential data. Consequently, surprisingly how little we know about the info of all goods we purchased. The unseen dimension of our possessions has still existed if the suppliers are insisted with the current information system meanwhile customers keep concentrating only the info in the wrap-page. Obviously, we need some changes.
Currently, some companies dedicated their resource to build their information repository that opens for customers to observe their vast network of sub-suppliers. However, all current systems are just focusing on the hard asset attributes with the boring scientific index or rough numbers about the industry standard what does not bring much significance to the understanding of normal customers. We have to acknowledge that with a little knowledge about the food industry, we are hard to differentiate the advantages of Global G.A.P certification against the organic certification from USDA. All the terminologies or even financial figures are not more useful than the brand of producers. More than that, the customers demand simple metrics that directly relate to their value preferences.
The last challenge I would like to share on this blog may be illustrated after this short story. Most customers may know about the top favourite product of Apple – iPhone which is normally seen in the bright, clean and modern iStore where is full of happiness and well-mannered people. But only a few ones have ever heard about the investigation conducted by The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract) that tells you about the sad story behind the lovely and cutting-edge products made from the assembly-line workers who have begun killing themselves since 2010. The given article reports that 18 reported suicide attempts with 14 confirmed deaths, depression and suicide have become normalised in the sprawling factory where more than 1.3 million workers are working daily. The life condition of these pitiable workers is controversial but the numbers never lie. Obviously, they are not happy or at least have the positive attitude with their work. Once the figure about the working hours or average salary gets the failure to reveal the secret of these poor workers, people are eager to find the alternative approach which incorporates not only the hard asset criteria but also soft asset information.
- Our solutions
In CCEG, not only products, we believe that all organizations, processes, projects and peoples have their stories. In the world of transparency and good things, people have their own right to track things from the start to the finish. Moreover, in the rise of social responsibility and an increasing interest in the ethical practices, no one would like to purchase products from unhappy workers, the soft asses like the positive sentiment should not be un-regarded in the decision making progress.
Using the combination of revolution in Distributed Ledger Technology and big data filtering methods, we are developing the tool called by Provenance Engine. Not only the information repository, Provenance Engine is the base to empower users presenting their value preferences and get profit from it.
About the structure of Provenance Engine, developing by the enthusiastic and well-skilled blockchain and big data developers, the system consists of two main parts which are called by Data Format Engine and E-passport.
Provenance Engine Overview
In the Data Format Engine, input data from suppliers will be collated and formatted following the existing non-financial metrics standard to their industries. After short questionnaires designed to reflect the total value of given entities, users have their own S/E labels and data about their value preferences. S/E labels is a single-number non-financial attribute monitoring product provenance, modern slavery conditions checks, Proofof-[…] metrics. Users could opt to have the digital presence through E-passport hosted by blockchain where store their corresponding non-financial attributes.
By this way, users could permanently determine their non-financial attributes. Generally, users are not only consumers but also all kinds of organizations, products, processes, projects and people. In case of e-authentication, Provenance Engine could support to provide the social attributes to identify social inclination of any citizens. The use of S/E labels implies wide-range application in many sectors, especially in e-commerce industry where the information of suppliers is limited.
In cooperation with other add-on services of Seratio Platform, consumers could precisely connect with the suppliers who share the same values preferences upon the information supported by provenance engine. Through the purchasing power in the hand of all people, we could positively impact the community and enhance our life experience.