Work

Blockchain-Enabled IIoT Architecture for Supply Chain Traceability: A Smart-Contract Approach for Food and Agricultural Industries

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Small- and medium-sized enterprises, especially in the agricultural food sector, struggle to implement end-to-end product traceability systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), due to the high costs and complexity involved for businesses of this scale. As customer expectations and regulatory requirements place an increasing emphasis on traceability and transparency, the combined use of industrial Internet of things (IIoT) technologies and blockchain-based smart contracts offers a promising pathway to cost-effective automation of supply chain processes. This paper develops a conceptual, multi-layer architecture that integrates sensing, communication, integration and smart-contract layers to support affordable, automated and extensible traceability for agri-food supply chains. Building on information processing theory and transaction cost economics, the framework explains how such architecture can reduce information uncertainty, lower monitoring costs and strengthen the organisational trust in agri-food supply chains. The framework is empirically illustrated and tested through an implementation that links distributed sensing infrastructure with a blockchain-based smart contract in a real agricultural supply chain setting. The evaluation assesses operational performance, data integrity and cost-efficiency, demonstrating that the proposed architecture can serve as a viable alternative or most importantly complement to traditional ERP solutions for small- and medium-sized enterprises that seek end-to-end traceability, transparency and automation.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app16126119

Authors: Alexandros Kolokas, Angelos Achnoulas, Dimitrios Bechtsis

Institutions: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of the Aegean

Language: English

Topic: Food Supply Chain Traceability

Subfield: Food Science

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Domain: Life Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Zero hunger, Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896