Hello, and welcome to another episode of 'This is My Architecture'.
Today, we're talking about a blockchain powered solution
from PricewaterhouseCoopers and I'm joined by Jen from PwC.
Jen, welcome to the show. - Thank you for having me.
- Can you tell us a little bit more about what your emerging tech team does?
- Yes, so our emerging technology team at PwC is focused on
bringing new and emerging technologies to the work that we do on the daily basis.
So we partner with our sector experts, folks that are embedded in industries
and specific clients, as well as with our clients
to co-create solutions to real world problems.
And some of those technologies that your team works with
is AI as well as blockchain? - Exactly.
So over the past few years we've actually been focused on what we call our
essential 8 technologies and the convergence between those.
And blockchain, IoT, AI are just three of those technologies.
- Okay, great. So we're talking material traceability,
we're talking supply chain, let's jump right in here and talk about
the feedback that you've received from your customers and your clients
and what they're asking for. - Let's do it.
So the way that we like to start off any possible solution,
is by starting with some design thinking.
So we hosted a workshop with about nine utility companies
and asked them about the pain that they feel in their daily processes.
And the things that we heard over and over again
was that everyone involved in their supply chain process
all have their own version of the truth.
There's limited end to end transparency within the entire supply chain.
The other thing that we kept hearing is that there's fairly stringent
regulatory standards that they need to comply with.
And in order to do that,
they need to have one reconciled version of the truth,
and sometimes that gets a little bit manual and a little bit costly.
- So we have transparency, we have compliance.
We also have a number of different users
that are interacting with this entire end to end process.
Can you talk to us a little bit about who those users are?
- So when we're dealing with any kind of utility supply chain process,
the second that someone needs a material down at an oil rig
or down at a job site, it can take a little bit of a while.
We start with a project manager,
in SAP actually ordering that new supply, that new pipe
and then that will eventually go down to a supplier,
sometimes multiple tiers of suppliers.
That would then get fed into a distributor,
that might then get fed into a series of other parties
before finally making their way to that utility company.
So we wanted to actually prove out with our blockcain solution
is three different things along this process.
So the first we wanted to prove, is this end to end transparency
across this entire value chain.
The second thing that we really wanted to try to prove,
is this notion of actually maintaining our privacy and data standards.
Right, the first question we always get asked when we talk about blockchain is,
'well, can't this get done in the central portal?'
Well, not quite because then one party has to own it.
- Sure. - Do we trust them?
Then there's a single point of failure, do we trust that?
And then one party might be able to see more information that they're allowed.
So we really wanted to prove that on the blockchain,
we can actually maintain privacy between these parties.
- So privacy being the second main thing that you guys really wanted to focus on?
- Exactly. And the third thing is
look, we know that it's a complex process to introduce something new
to an entire industry.
We wanted to demonstrate that it really doesn't have to be this hard.
We wanted to demonstrate that this can integrate with existing workflows
and existing systems.
So we wanted to actually show...
that this can integrate directly with SAP,
the tool that our utility companies already know,
And showcase that this really
will integrate with the process they already follow,
which actually kicks off with the purchase order.
- So you guys have really allowed from the integration perspective
an API call into an enterprise resource planning system
that customers already own? - Exactly.
A simple API call into SAP
and then our information comes up onto the blockchain.
Shared single source of truth.
- Okay, so let's talk a little bit more specifics technically from
what we're doing. Are we deploying Hyperledger Fabric
and creating the actual Ledger itself to interact with this entire process?
- Exactly, so the way that we typically run POCs with our clients
is we actually host them within our own environment.
And then of course when we move to pilot, when we move to production
we think through some additional considerations:
hosting, infrastructure, integration,
before we select a cloud platform or provider.
But when we host on PwC we're building on AWS
and we're building on the Amazon Managed Blockchain,
which actually comes pre-deployed with Hyperledger Fabric 1.2.
- So let's talk a little bit about tracking assets
now that we already have the integration from the Ledger into the ERP system.
A lot of customers they really rely on the importance
of where their asset is at at any given time.
So tracking the location amongst other different types of telemetry.
Can you talk to us about how you guys made a decision to leverage
AWS IoT core for this telemetry data.
- We need to get our physical world onto our virtual world, our blockchain
through IoT.
So the decision to use IoT made natural sense.
When dealing with our really complex supply chain,
we wanted to make sure that we were capturing
all of the things that happen in our physical world onto the blockchain.
We wanted to make sure we're capturing the location of different assets.
We want to make sure we're capturing these really complex hand-offs
between different parties in the value chain.
So when it came to IoT we actually spent a little bit more time
in non-technical requirements than we did with technical requirements.
We spent a lot more time actually figuring out
what we really needed to track
in order to have meaningful data on the blockchain
and who specifically needed to have access to get information
onto the blockchain.
So we ended up settling on was different thresholds
of location and movement for information to be added onto the chain,
as well as sensors that would come on at specific points throughout the day
in order to be able to capture information.
- Great. So let's talk a little bit about the notification process
that happens along with the smart contract updates
given the chain code and the transactions that are happening.
- Exactly, so from an IoT perspective, we did set those thresholds in place
in order to identify when the IoT sensors would need to notify
a contractor, or notify a utility company that something doesn't look or feel right,
and that would come up as something as simple as
a mobile notification.
We created a mobile app really to make this as simple as possible
for our utility companies.
The other thing that's happening on the chain code,
right, is it's moving the workflow along.
So really what we're seeing happening is
as different parties do their intended action,
that information is being written to the chain,
and we're moving forward in the process.
If the wrong actor tries to do something that they're not entitled to,
that's another situation where we got notifications and the process stops.
- Great, so any type of asset agitation along the way
that's not supposed to happen, the Ledger is being updated,
notifications are being sent out. And I love the fact that
you're creating this immutable, digital Ledger.
Making sure that everything is being tracked accordingly,
and it's really helping with the transparency,
compliance and regulatory bodies that you discussed.
Listening closely to your customers in true, again, GSI fashion here.
And at the end of the day what's very important is that
this platform is really combating against the authenticity issues
that the supply chain industry is really facing,
as well as the counterfeit black-market goods
that are making their ways around.
- Exactly, it's twofold. It's adding this transparency into our supply chain
so we can ensure the end to end providence
of every single thing coming in.
And then it's also a little bit to make the lives of our poor project managers
a little bit easy.
Again, reconciling a source of truth between all these different parties
is a manual process, it's very reconciliation intensive.
And so when we have that shared Ledger just
connecting everything on the backend, we're able to relieve some of that stress.
- The platform solving a very big issue
out there within the industry and we really appreciate your time today.
- Thanks for having me. - Thanks a lot, Jen.
And thank you for joining us on 'This is My Architecture'.