The world’s largest tire manufacturer plans to use the block chain to make the rubber supply chain more transparent. The project fits in well with the company’s commitment to the sustainable and fair cultivation of natural rubber.

Science Application International Corp (SAIC) has announced a joint pilot project with the US tire manufacturer Goodyear. The aim of the project is to better map the tire supply chain through block-chain. As a result of the press release, only a few facts are known so far. The Blockchain, it says, is “a cybersecurity technology based on a distributed account book that increases security, traceability and immutability. It uses secure, encrypted platforms to share shared account books between participants in a supply chain and securely record transactions and data.

Goodyear produces more than half a million tyres a day in more than 80 production facilities around the world. The company is probably the world’s largest purchaser of natural rubber, some of which is grown in the South Asian countries of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. Similar to many raw materials, mining often takes place under problematic conditions.

SAIC has been working on the application of blockchains since 2016 and has already developed prototypes for some blockchains that are tailor-made for this purpose. The plan for this is a non-permission-free block chain, i.e. a network in which only nodes that have permission from a central party can participate. The block chain is to be integrated into existing logistics tools and combined with software for supply chain management. The encryption of the data should play an important role, but it remains unclear why the block chain must be private, since the data is encrypted anyway.