On the extension of digital ecosystems for scm and customs with distributed ledger technologies requirements analysis, innovation assessment, and prototype design for the lake constance region

Global supply chains represent the backbone of the modern manufacturing industry. Planning of global supply chains still represents a major hurdle, mainly because of the high complexity and unforeseen disruptions that have to be mastered for meeting the different logistics windows in a globally distributed production environment. Trust in supply chains is an additional challenge. A major - albeit sometimes overlooked - part of Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the management and integration of customs processes, clearing of tariffs, (re-)billing of customers, and fulfilling other legal requirements related to crossing borders, ranging from environmental standards over goods inspection to general paper work. With the exception of work offered by the World Customs Organization (WCO) the issue of customs and blockchain is still underrepresented in research and practice. In this paper, we look at innovations that drive the current ICT-enabled SCM research and how these can be combined with smart customs management. After a literature review and introduction to the state-of-the-art, we list potential trust-based innovations for SCM and customs in digital business ecosystems. Based upon the innovations we also describe a requirements analysis of existing distributed ledger technologies (requirements for system layout, system configuration, system governance). A description of the prototype for the Lake Constance region - on which we are currently working - concludes the paper.