No longer just a buzzword?

Hi there! And welcome back!

Unfortunately, this will be the last of my series of blogs. However, in this last blog, we will look a bit further in the future. Normally, a control tower is one of the buzzwords you can hear quite often in the logistics field. As already explained in the last couple of blogs, the control tower can provide quite some advantages to your company. Therefore, the control towers should no longer just be a buzzword but become a reality.

Another one of those buzzwords is the blockchain. First, let me explain a little bit about the blockchain before I will explain why these two innovations go hand-in-hand very well.

The concept of the blockchain arose when the Bitcoin came out. The idea behind the blockchain is that there is one shared database which every user is able to access. This means that all the users are able to see what is happening in the database. Also, when something is changed, the change is automatically shown to every user. This creates a situation in which unwanted and undesired changes or events are immediately shown to all the users of the blockchain, so measures can be taken.

Now, this information sharing is exactly what I already touched upon in my previous blog. One of the control towers’ main advantages is the fact that it provides a lot of transparency to its users. This is exactly where a blockchain could help.

For instance, if the inventory levels would be placed in a “blockchain ledger”, the database, every inventory point can see the stock located in the other warehouses. Moreover, the main office of the company can see the grand total of the products which it still has in storage, and can, therefore, guide the sales and procurement department to take action.

Also, as mentioned before, when trading all across the world, communication can sometimes be an obstacle. Therefore, one of the advantages which is also brought by a blockchain is the loss of communication which could occur. With a blockchain, this can no longer be the case as the information will automatically be updated to the database and shared amongst all of the users.

Now, at the end of my blogs, I hope that I have managed to guide you to my ultimate goal: persuading you to consider creating a control tower. After all, in the blogs, you could have read many advantages to having a control tower and what is needed when creating one. I believe that if you were to combine the control tower with a blockchain, even more advantages are spring to life. Thank you for following my blogs, and for the very last time:

See Y’All!