Eureka! Institutional Repository

Over the last few years, an issue that concerns both academic and commercial world, is food safety. The speed at which technology evolves, but also the rapid rhythm that has invaded modern life, revolutionized the way humans perceive the world. It is now an integral part of everyday life. More specifically, in the supply chain, with technological development, many traceability systems have been implemented. However, these days, all these systems are centralized and usually involve each business individually. This might mean that they are vulnerable enough to collapse even from a single point of failure. These systems are opaque, monopolistic and have asymmetric information. This can lead to frauds, corruption, violations and falsification of information. At the same time, when a comprehensive traceability is required, each member in the supply chain must communicate with each other so that it can share its centralized knowledge. This communication is time-consuming and can lead to costs, which are passed on to food safety. Nowadays, a new decentralized technology called blockchain is a pioneering innovation. Recently, blockchain has entered many industries. Supply Chain Management has realized its potential. Its use can trigger transparency, better sharing of information, as well as enhancing food safety in this industry. The technology of blockchain and smart contracts have been studied during this thesis. Blockchain technologies were used to develop a decentralized platform. The purpose of this paper is to provide quality and immutable information in the dairy supply chain, from the farm to the supermarket shelf. This application enables collaborating companies to exchange information and track the trace of their products. At the same time the final consumer has the knowledge of the provenance, the distribution, the conditions of transport and the packaging of the product. The quality of the final product is credible due to the integrity of information; therefore, the choice of the consumer can be based on economic, quality and personal criteria. Finally, the overall benefits and limitations of the blockchain technology are recorded and analyzed.