The thesis aims to investigate the impact of Blockchain technology on Food Supply Chain Management from the case study of Walmart, an American retail chain which has already adapted the technology into its product tracing system and Atria, a Finnish food company, which, on the contrary, equipped its meat tracing system without the assistance of Blockchain technology.
The main objective of this thesis is to benchmark the two tracing systems, one is operated by Walmart and the other by Atria in order to figure out whether the technology can actually enhance the traceability and improve the transparency of Supply Chain network as a whole.
The literature review re-addresses the academic terms and concepts that are related to the field of research, which are Supply Chain Management, Food Supply Chain Management, the concept of Blockchain technology. In each main section, there are several subsections in which provide in-depth and more elaborate details to support the established ground of a specific theory.
The empirical research introduces and studies two real-life business cases: Walmart using IBM Food Trust – the management platform specialized for Food industry, developed on the basis of Blockchain technology to trace the entire journey from Mexico to the final point of purchase at Walmart stores' shelves and Atria using its in-house technology development to trace the meat and poultry product line from farm -to-fork within the Finnish market. The data are collected by conducting several semi-structure interviews with the personnel of each case company.
Differences in the scope of operation, the operation and the technology taken into usage have generally led to some significant dissimilarities between the two companies. Nevertheless, Atria can discover potential benefits and opportunities of Blockchain technology from the study and learn from Walmart's pioneer experiences on how to efficiently integrate the technology into the management of Food Supply Chain for its future plan of adaptation.