Blockchain-enabled workflow management system for fine-grained resource sharing in E-commerce logistics

摘要

E-commerce logistics is on the rise with the rapid development of logistics industry. Facing the fierce competition, the improvement of logistics service becomes necessity for service providers to gain competitiveness in the market. However, the heterogeneous requirements from different service demanders place great challenges for the E-commerce logistics service providers. The most puzzled one is to prevent fragmentation of logistics resources to serve different demanders (customers). This phenomenon of resource fragmentation is aggravated by the implementation of ogies or management requirements. It restricts the liquidity of logistics resource to serve different kinds of demanders. Hence, to break this limitation and achieve central coordination of logistics resources to satisfy heterogeneous requests from demanders becomes an imperative requirement for E-commerce logistics service provider. Therefore, this paper proposed a blockchain-enabled workflow management system (BCWMS) to centrally share heterogeneous logistics resources with different customers. Three key innovative technologies are involved to empower BCWMS. The first one is gateway technology introduced to realize the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) management of heterogeneous logistics resources. Secondly, to effectively and efficiently coordinate logistics resources, a workflow operating platform is designed to suit different business logic. Additionally, a resource blockchain is designed with the integration of blockchain technology with agent technology to guarantee the data reliability to provide accurate front-line resource execution data for different customers to conduct higher decision-makings.