A Deep Tech Framework for Resilient Pharmaceutical Supply Chain in India Using AI, Blockchain, and IoT

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors and most significant reasons leading to supply chain inefficiency with respect to high cost, high lead time and poor quality at wholesale stage of mango supply chain in India, and also to find out the measures which may be taken to improve supply chain efficiency. Design/methodology/approach The paper opted for an exploratory study using the quantitative and qualitative method of research. The study was conducted at Asia’s largest and world’s second largest fruits and vegetable wholesale market (Mandi) in Azadpur, Delhi. Factors have been identified using factor analysis and the measures to improve supply chain efficiency in fruits sector have been found out through semi-structured interviews with agri- and food-supply chain experts. Findings Based on the factor analysis, three factors were identified for high cost, namely, operational charges, labour and resources; four factors were identified for high lead time, namely, operational issues, labour, resources and infrastructure; and four factors were identified for poor quality, namely, operational issues, infrastructure, resources and poor ambience. It was also found that operational factor is the most significant factor leading to supply chain inefficiency. The study also highlighted the measures for improving supply chain efficiency based on the outcome of the interviews. Research limitations/implications This study is limited to the wholesale stage of fruit supply chain with the focus on Azadpur Mandi, Delhi, India, with specific reference to mango. Also, the measures have been identified for only the most significant reasons under each factor leading to supply chain inefficiency with respect to cost, time and quality. Originality/value There is a dearth of literature on improving the supply chain efficiency pertaining to the wholesale stage of fruits and vegetable sector in India. This paper tries to fulfil the gap and contributed to the literature on agriculture supply chain, which may be helpful for the researchers as well as the practitioners to improve food supply chain pertaining to developing countries.

The present study tries to expand the current body of literature on supply chain integration, by studying the antecedents of logistics integration and firm performance in the context of the downstream petroleum supply chain in India. Data was collected from 348 petrol stations in the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, India. Path analysis using structural equation modelling was performed to know the strength of the relationship between the identified variables. The findings show that long-term relationship affects firm performance. Also, information technology positively affects logistics integration, which positively affects firm performance. Based on these findings, the study proposes solutions to the issues being faced in the downstream petroleum supply chain in India. The current research applies past findings on supply chain integration in the context of downstream petroleum supply chains in India and addresses the lack of academic research as well as provides specific courses of actions as implications for the issues of downstream petroleum supply chains in India.

Procurement processes within Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are essential for managing supplier relationships, purchase orders, and payment settlements. Conventional ERP-based procurement often faces challenges related to inefficiency, manual reconciliation, lack of transparency, and susceptibility to fraud or contractual disputes. Blockchain-enabled smart contracts offer a transformative approach by providing self-executing agreements that operate on decentralized, tamper-resistant ledgers. These contracts ensure automation, trust, and compliance, thereby addressing long-standing limitations in procurement workflows. This paper investigates the integration of blockchain technology with ERP-based procurement systems, focusing on how smart contracts can automate vendor onboarding, streamline purchase order execution, enforce payment terms, and ensure regulatory compliance. The discussion emphasizes architectural principles for blockchain-ERP integration, including transparency, immutability, interoperability, and governance. Various blockchain platforms such as Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, and Corda are assessed for their suitability in enterprise procurement environments, considering factors such as permissioned access, scalability, and regulatory alignment. Through reference models and case studies, the paper demonstrates how blockchain enabled procurement enhances efficiency, reduces disputes, and strengthens supply chain accountability. Key challenges including interoperability with legacy ERP, smart contract vulnerabilities, and compliance with global regulations are also explored. The study provides a conceptual and practical framework for designing blockchain-enabled procurement architectures, highlighting their potential to reshape ERP ecosystems and support sustainable digital transformation.

Evaluating critical causal factors for post-harvest losses (PHL) in the fruit and vegetables supply chain in India using the DEMATEL approach

Supply chain performance has gained significant importance in the last two decades. Almost every sector has utilized its implementation benefits. Unlike, manufacturing sector, supply chain management is very critical and complex in process industry such as textile industry. Textile industries’ supply chain in India is very lengthy and complex, so as its performance measurement. This paper proposed to develop a conceptual framework based on the literature review and discussion with experts. Framework proposed utilizes the essence of balanced scorecard perspective, in order to overcome some of the earlier literature gaps.

Efficiency, security and transparency are critical for public health issues such as counterfeit vaccines, cold chain integrity and data authenticity. This study introduces a decentralised smart contract‐driven blockchain framework that incorporates federated learning and edge computing to overcome the limitations of traditional centralised systems. Through decentralised decision‐making and real‐time data management, the proposed framework facilitates traceability, reduces vaccine wastage and ensures robust cold chain monitoring. The framework applied hybrid evaluation using Blockchain Impact Modelling (BIM) and Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in order to show prominent improvement in scalability, security and operational efficiency. The experimental results confirm that the framework can detect temperature anomalies 76% faster, increase transaction throughput by 36.1% and improve breach detection to 99.7%. Smart contracts enable automated and accurate decision‐making, whereas FL ensures privacy‐preserving analytics among stakeholders. EC integration reduces latency and computational overhead, allowing real‐time responses. This new architecture provides a strong foundation for vaccine supply chain management, addressing global challenges while adapting to different regulatory landscapes. This framework marks a new benchmark in securing healthcare logistics and extending its applicability to broader pharmaceutical supply chains.

Warehouses play a significant role in cold chains as they do for regular supply chains. Although their goals are the same for both cold chains and regular supply chains, the operations of cold warehouses are more sophisticated since the cost of operation is considerably higher due to energy consumption and obsolesce of products in substandard conditions. Recently, there has been an enormous interest in the cold food supply chain to reduce food waste occurring along the chain. Hence, efficient management of cold warehouses becomes an important issue in this direction. Design and operation requirements in a cold warehouse may be different from a traditional non-cold warehouse. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of cold chain operations, mostly by focusing on cold warehouse operations. We provide some statistics from a cold chain, design, and technology requirements for cold warehouses as well as warehouse operations shaped according to that warehouse features. It is observed that there are quite different design parameters in cold storage.KeywordsWarehouse operationsCold supply chainCold warehouseTechnologies for cold chain

Currently, being considered is the pandemic of sustainability concerns along with the issues related to transparency and efficiency in the global food supply chain. In addition, blockchain technology is a transformational solution that facilitates stakeholders to build trust, operational efficiency and traceability. From management perspective, this research also examined the part that blockchain plays in the food supply chain including its possible effect or impact on sustainability, ethical sourcing, transparency as well as efficiency in food retail chain. This study’s methodology is quantitative research approach. The method in the study was a purposive sampling while survey questionnaires were used. A total of 280 participants have participated in the study. In this research, it was explored key blockchain applications as such as traceability systems, decentralized ledgers and smart contracts. Besides, blockchain improved the rate at which the supply chain worked through removing the inefficiencies, automating transactions and enhancing the workflow efficiency. It also reinforced trust by proper and clear product traceability and compliance with the regulatory standards and ethical sourcing. The results, however, suggest that blockchain technology holds the ability to undermine the handling of the supply chain where efficiencies in resource management and sustainable practices, fair trade, and convenient coordination are facilitated. Apart from the above, blockchain technology offers a solid suitable platform for boosting sustainability in operational efficiencies and streaming the food supply chain to the farthest point. But the adoption of this unnatural process continued and ultimately shaped the future of resilient and transparent food systems. Keywords: Supply Chain Efficiency, Ethical Sourcing, Smart Contracts, Traceability, Transparency, Food Supply Chain and Blockchain.

As the world is becoming more VUCA for business operations, organizations are leveraging the competitive advantage through their supply chain practices. The food supply chain is no exception. Being competitive has become imperative in terms of sustainability and accountability of the business process. Therefore, organizations are adopting blockchain to track and trace the information flow to ensure a better business process. Further, to ensure sustainability, analyzing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions aids firms in achieving a reasonable improvement in the food supply chain. So, the present study collects carbon emissions data for palm oil production. The study evaluates palm oil production in the Sumatra region, Indonesia (Cradle to Port), through predictive modeling. Here, the palm production process is classified as cultivation, harvesting, and shipping. Then, the study evaluates the GHG emissions from the three phases to understand the carbon footprint in palm oil production. Finally, the study uses blockchain to track and trace the GHG emissions in the palm oil supply chain using Hyperledger Fabric self‐executed smart contracts. The study has developed unique contributions in terms of developing predictive modeling, blockchain architecture, and deep learning in palm production to leverage the competitive advantage of the supply chain in the VUCA world for business excellence in the global market.

Purpose The organic reconfiguration in supply chain practices significantly varies with restaurant types, customers and the extent of the degree of serving organic food. The purpose of this study is to develop a quantitative application to measure the degree of serving Organic Food for Restaurant Supply Chains. Design/methodology/approach The detailed semi-structured interviews, onsite visits and secondary customer reviews of 60 restaurants of different sizes, locations and cuisines from India are used to explore typologies of organic supply chains. In the second stage, an approach for evaluating the degree of organic food serving is developed on the basis of Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) attributes, and differences between typologies are statistically tested using non-parametric Mann–Whitney U-test. Findings The results show that the degree of serving organic food differs with the type of restaurants across SCOR attributes. Based on the variations in SC practices, the work presents two types of restaurant supply chains – Organic Food Enthusiast (Type-I) and b) Village Voyagers (Type-II). The difference between the degree of serving organic food for the “Make” and “Enable” attributes is statistically insignificant. Despite variations in the strategic positioning, customer type and geographical context, both the organic supply chains tend to preserve their core making process. Practical implications The degree of serving organic food for each individual element of the SCOR model can be used by practitioners and managers to identify specific problems and opportunity areas where practical actions could be defined and taken to improve the organic food-based supply chain reconfiguration. Originality/value This paper proposes the quantitative approach to evaluating organic food serving capabilities of restaurant supply chains. Further, it empirically demonstrates the typologies of organic food serving supply chains.

With close to 22 percent of aggregate industry sales tied up in inventories in the entire supply chain network, what is it that ails Indian industry? Is it the way Indian supply chains are configured – their orientation to processes to streamline business activities; their fusion of information technology to speed up business transactions; their approach to supply chain strategy to improve bottom line results – that has restricted them from achieving global standards? The article, based on a recently concluded nationwide study titled “Supply chain management practices in Indian Industry: 2000”, throws up glaring facts about the current architecture of supply chains in India. The article concludes that though some Indian organizations are moving fast towards improving supply chain efficiencies, most of them are still far from realising its effect on business performance.

A smart contract is a program running on a blockchain platform. Smart devices send data to smart contracts or change their own status based on smart contracts. Businesses want to use smart devices and smart contracts to streamline workflow because smart contracts reduce the need in trusted intermediators and cut down enforcement costs. However, developing smart contract applications is challenging due to different memory models, different interaction models, and a dearth of supporting tools and libraries. When developers are asked to reimplement conventional applications to smart contracts, it is thus ideal to automatically transform them, avoiding manual labor, as well as ensuring reliability and security. This paper contributes a set of rules to transform conventional applications in the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern into smart contracts running on Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain platform preferred by businesses. Major transformations are performed in the model, while in the controller, model calls are replaced by smart contract calls. The source application and the target smart contract are all written in Java. Our rules add read-your-writes consistency that Hyperledger Fabric does not natively support. Runtime pre- and post-condition checking in the original application is supported in the transformed smart contract. We evaluated our rules on CoCoME and other MVC applications, and all code ran correctly and passed unit tests.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the cold chain for biopharmaceutical products to the spotlight. To preserve their structure and function, biopharmaceuticals such as cells, proteins and enzymes, RNA molecules, and RNA-based drugs (e.g., mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines) require low temperatures for proper handling, storage, and transport. Due to the sensitivity of these products transported through cold chains and the lack of traceability, risks associated with the stability, efficacy, safety, tardiness, quality, and waste are significant. For this reason, the ability to quickly find, connect, and do business with a new supply chain partner, such as in cold chain partnering is essential. Many researchers suggested various approaches to improve the effectiveness of cold chains. However, standardization and interoperability remain open challenges. Motivated by the biopharma risks and the need for interoperability, this paper presents a preliminary investigation into a novel approach for automating the onboarding of new supply chain partners. Based on the analysis of previous efforts in the cold chain domain, the notion of external context is recognized. In addition, the paper introduces the notion of business context which is proposed as a basis for a novel approach to achieve agile supply chain via automatic supply chain partner onboarding. Cold chain networking is used as a specific case study. The investigation results show that, with identified improvements, the approach has a potential to increase the automation in supply chain integration.

The present study aims to enumerate the issues of biodiesel supply chains in India. After an extensive literature review to access the current state of research on biodiesel, primary data was collected from academic experts and industry professionals engaged in biodiesel research and production. Ten issues were identified by the experts and pairwise rating of these issues were also done by the same experts. The issues were prioritised using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The results of the AHP analysis revealed that issues such as seasonality, variability in yield, logistics, and storage are the major issues that have a bearing on the supply chain of biodiesel. The study also suggests implications for theory and practitioners and policy actors. The present work is unique in the sense that research on the issues of biodiesel supply chains in India is meagre.

COVID-19 is a disease having different variants of the virus. Initially, it started in China and was widely spread in almost all countries in the world. This pandemic situation is one of the most widely spread diseases in recent history. When we turned the pages of history on viruses there was an influenza pandemic in 1918 with the exact number of death still unknown. Due to this COVID -19, the death toll could not be counted due to the nonavailability of proper records. The objective of this paper is to analyze the positive and negative impacts of COVID -19 in general. It is further focused on possible challenges to the supply chain in India. India is highly influenced by the pandemic situation in terms of deaths, unemployment due to losing jobs and poverty. This article also emphasized the socioeconomic, environmental and political atmosphere in a country. General analysis of COVID-19 is very important because there is a wing comprising dominant medical experts in the control and management of the disease. The common man thinks about the pandemic situation in very negative terms due to its emotional, socio-economic, environmental, political and cultural factors. However, it is also positive due to certain factors that help to reintegrate and reorganize society as a whole.