Following are the participants n my blockchain demo:
- Supplier
- Manufacturer
- Distributor
- Retailer
The Supplier ships 1000 lbs of raw material, as a single unit or batch, to the Manufacturer. The information about this shipment is stored in the Blockchain. Then, the Manufacturer produces a different product based on the same raw material from the Supplier. At this point, the Manufacturer has their own product, units, batch, and so forth.
For example, from that 1000 lbs shipment, the Manufacturer may produce 5 different products in different sized batches with different units. Then, the Manufacturer ships 2 of those products to two different Distributors, who then can take that and further break it down into different batches and units, which they then ship to their Retailers.
Basically, the process is the same throughout the entire supply chain, where the previous party provides something that gets broken down and transformed by the receiving participant. To me, it seems like there will need to be many blocks that all "relate" to each other, based on some parent/child relationship or dependency.
For example, the supplier would be the first block/parent. Then the manufacturer can have X number of blocks/children that are dependent on that block, and so forth. Am I seeing or conceptualizing this wrong? Is there a better way? Any idea how this could be implemented in Sawtooth, from a high level?
