Tag: Transparency in Supply Chains

The Seratio EcoSphere

End of a Journey, Beginning of a New

 

Summary

At the end of Q3 2018 the not-for-profit foundation Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Governance (CCEG) will have completed the Seratio Ecosystem to MVP (minimum viable product) level ready to start implementation in Q4 trials with significant partners in cities, regions and countries around the world.  This has been a 7 year journey, started in May 2011, to create structures for good that allows us to travel through our lives guided by the beliefs we hold dear to our hearts. By establishing a digital currency of intangible value, we can use AI (Artificial Intelligence) Bots on our mobiles to navigate our interactions with organisations, products, projects, processes and even people based on their provenance and how aligned they are to our own values. Retailers will be able to incentivise and target to differing degrees whole communities that match most closely their corporate values. We will be able to exchange our token instruments of non-financial value with assets of financial value.

Now moving to engagement and integration within global markets across public, private, civil society and community sectors, the Seratio EcoSystem will be governed by its participants through a Distributed Autonomous Foundation (DAF) which itself will integrate with other DAO (organisations) structures representing the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) both small and big. We are an international community of over 120,000 with a vision which are ready to deliver, but the next phase is about market need, scalable adoption, and professional operational delivery to give us a world based on sustainable social impact. Our common goal is to form a world transacting on the optimisation of Total Value where both Financial and Non-Financial Value are of equal importance and driven by our individual and collective Values.

The Journey (2011-2018)

We started our journey in May 2011 and created digital impact measurement, the Social Earnings Ratio, which became the “fastest adopted social impact analysis metric in the world” (The Vatican, 2014). The S/E Ratio, a corollary to the financial P/E Ratio, digitises non-financial value, turns sentiment into financial value, and does it through Fast Data in under 10 seconds. Applied successfully to Social Value Act 2012, Modern Slavery Act 2015, EU Commissions, etc and a plethora of academic commissions, CCEG became the leading provider of SaaS platforms across many sectors, with its own journal Social Value & Intangibles Review.

In early 2016 we moved from just  the measurement of value to the movement of value, adding a transaction of value capability through blockchain. We now have a CCEG Blockchain UN Lab which conducted UK’s first Initial Coin Offering in October 2017 with UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) guidance,  an institutional blockchain consultancy and advisory service Rothbadi & Co,  a large IP DLT consortium CyberFutures, and a university educational value forum www.EfficiencyExchange.ac.uk.

Justas Structuras Creare (Creating Just Structures) #goodistrending

Our aim remains to enable open source structural change for good,  having researched 12 Whitepapers, a membership association for Blockchain Alliance for Good, and the world’s first peer reviewed academic journal Frontiers in Blockchain, jointly launched with a mainstream academic publisher.

Development Cycle

Seratio Ecosytem final image

The integrated components of the Seratio EcoSphere are described above with the following easy to read non-technical guides to understand the linkages:

Current Status

Seratio Ecosystem - circles

The system as a whole is 85% complete (green shaded above) at present moment with 100% expected by October 2018. Originally expected to complete by July 2018, the additions of the DAF and Exchanges has extended the timescales a further 2-3 months. Although the securities financial exchange (yellow shaded above) will take further still with Swiss FINMA approval required, the security asset exchange is not an immediate requirement for day one as many others exist which we can use.

Moving Forward with Partners

With the end of the visioning and development cycle, comes a new challenge as we move into pilots and trials of our MVP to test and improve the Seratio system. We have in place already one pilot with a UK brand Mencap which has been delayed now to December 2018 due to their financial constraints, several demo’s and launches in November 2018 in Amsterdam and June 2019 in Copenhagen with Informa Plc (FTSE 100), as well as city launches in Taizhou (August 2018), Yiwu (October 2018), and country launches in Wales (August 2018) and Moldova (November 2018); other partners are now in discussion.

The Seratio Ecosystem is aided by AI to assess the complex analytical data available and to transparently steer consumers becoming their online friend. Similarly for public sector institutions, private sector corporates, civil society NGO’s – and their leaders – to become their values driven guide

As with all the work at CCEG, the Seratio EcoSphere is open source, and part of our contribution towards the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

If you wish to be a partner please feel free to contact us at blockchain.lab@cceg.org.uk

CHINESE

 

Supply chain provenance from cradle to grave

Leather Industry with Ethical Issues

In the new era of sustainable markets, like all industries buying a leather bag carries with it ethical connotations. In reality, consumers are offered little provenance information about pieces of clothing, footwear or fashion accessories. With greater recognition surrounding animal protection, human right, sustainable development and chemical processing the leather industry is facing a growing demand for transparency in their supply chains.

Each year, the leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans their skins and hides. Not only the skins of cattle or calves, with the diversity demanded by customers, suppliers need to meet discerning consumer demands for sustainable practices. Although, for example, the typically alligators can reach up to 60 years, in farms, the animal is slaughtered before the age of 2 due to length considerations. Animal husbandry during those brief years plays an important part.  

Worker, Moroccan Tannery

The scandal of child worker in leather tanneries in Bangladesh in 2012 highlights that leather products are sometimes produced by underpaid workers in unacceptable conditions. Modern Slavery is not by any means an issue unique to the industry but needs to be tackled when found.

Apart from the impact on humans and animals, leather manufacturing can have environmental considerations. The older more traditional tanneries use by necessity toxic chemicals which then necessitates extensive waste processing. There is a drive in the industry towards much greater responsible practices.

To combat growing consumer awareness of such issues, the transparency of product provenance, trace-ability and effective control of suppliers are key to the growth of the sector. The question arises as to how this can be achieved most efficiently, with least cost, and maximum impact.

Potential of Block-chain Technology

One essentially need to prove to customers that they are buying a ‘good’ product, rather than one with questionable provenance. With the development of international trade and global value chains, making any product is complex intertwining a large number of suppliers with multi-step  processes. Each step involves the creation of  data, storage and centralized access. Technically, having detailed information of products from birth to death is impossible. These complexities make supply chain provenance a significant non-trivial exercise.

Block-chain technology can potentially improve the transparency and trace-ability issues within the manufacturing supply chain through the use of immutable record of data, distributed storage, and controlled user access. All data in each step of the supply chain will update directly and securely in block-chain. All stakeholders could trace and access information of the product with every detail of the animal husbandry, labour conditions, chemical processes and other intangible KPI’s that directly effect the tangible price of the product at each stage.

The Proposed Framework

The proposed approach comprises of a decentralized distributed system that uses blockchain(s) to collect, store and manage key product information throughout its life cycle. This creates a secure, shared record of exchange for each product along with specific product information.

We propose three main stage.

  • The first stage is collecting data. As a product moves through its life cycle, it is defined by a variety of actors – eg producers, suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers and finally the end consumer. Each of these actors play an important part in this system, logging in key information about the product and its current status on to the block-chain network. Each product would have a unique digital profile containing all related information, populated during various life cycle stages.

 

  • The second stage is verifying data. In this stage, all data collected from input stage will be gathered and compared with the block-chain. This is double verification process to ensure that all data input is identical and acceptable.
  • The third stage is calculating data. All data, both tangible financial data as well as intangible non-financial data must be represented in a consistent way to allow comparisons. In this stages, data also will be encrypted and added to block-chain.

Overall, the movement of total value will be parallel processed from farm to land-fill.

In each step, the financial value and non-financial value will be tracked –  evaluated, added or subtracted from the product provenance. Through all stage of the production cycle, the total value of product will be illustrated and articulated in simple metrics including at the end to the consumer to allow decisions to be made.

A Collective Vision

When you can measure it, you can influence the sustainable development of the cycle.  It allows for both upstream and downstream controls to be enabled and embedded, from farms to land-fill. In effect a product can carry a digital passport that contains all the information you need to make and direct decision making at each stage.