A blockchain-based intelligent recommender system framework for enhancing supply chain resilience

Abstract

Applying advanced digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain (BLC), bigdata analytics (BDA) and digital twin (DT)/simulations to enhance supply chain resilience (SCRes) has been widely discussed in light of the global pandemic, regional conflicts, and the technology revolution such as Industry 4.0 and 5.0. Previous studies are limited at the conceptual level as the proactive SCRes measure with a standalone fashion. The intelligent recommendation system (IRS) obtains the capabilities for enhancing SCRes as a reactive digital measure. However, the utilization of the IRS as the SCRes enhancement tool is neglected, investigation on implementing the IRS for the SC disruption response is yet to come. To close these gaps, a data-driven supply chain disruption response IRS baseline framework was proposed by this research as an initial SCRes reactive solution. To guarantee the reliability of the proposed IRS as a stable, secure, and resilient decision support system, blockchain technology is integrated into the baseline architecture. The BLC-IRS framework is demonstrated with user prototype and industrial case to present its executable functions. A system dynamics (SD) simulation model is adopted to validate the BLC-IRS framework, the simulation results indicated that our proposed BLC-IRS can be implemented as an effective a SC disruption response measure. Our developed BLC-IRS contributes an executable SCRes digital solution with synthetic technologies as a reactive SCRes measure, enabled users to mitigate the firm and partial network level disruption in an agile and safe manner.