Jewelry industry's new 'TrustChain Initiative' uses blockchain to track products
Talking about jewelry industries, there are several problems rises.When customers purchasing jewelers, it's always important to make sure the jewelers are real.However, most consumers are lacking knowledge on how to distinguish the quality of jewellery. For jewellery companies, they also need to track the process of diamonds and precious metals been found from mine and then go in to manufacture process and distribute to retail. It's a complicated process and involve different locations , distributors and factories.
Now, IBM is provide support to jewellery companies with blockchain technology to make it easier for consumers to track diamonds and precious metals through the various steps of the supply chain. This initiative is called the TrustChain which will run on IBM’s technology, includes precious-metals refiner Asahi Refining, US jewellery retailer Helzberg Diamonds, precious-metals supplier LeachGarner, jewellery-maker the Richline Group and verification service UL. Products being tracked through the program should be available to consumers shopping for jewellery by year-end.
From my perspective, this technology help to prove to consumers that their purchases don’t include low quality diamonds. I think this technology can increase consumers trust to the brand and increasing chances of purchasing. It also help jewellery companies to track its own supply chain. This technology will be faster and efficient than let employees to record process and update to its supply chain which may incur errors and it might not be trustworthy. Nowadays, young consumers have more access to information so they are more skeptical and doing more researches when making a purchase decisions.TrustChain is definitely helpful for jewellery companies to better target at younger consumers.
However, nothing is perfect. I believe Trustchain system will also have errors. But the benefit is that blockchain is a team sport and many, many eyeballs are acting as a check for each step along the way. If a problem is found, it can be fixed through the same level of consensus. So this system will also improve problem solving speeds and make the supply chain system more transparency.
Since TrustChain in mainly focusing on tracking process in supply chain, it can also apply on other industries such as food products and automobile. I am looking forward to seeing TrustChain system implementation in different industries.
