Towards Efficient and Fine-Grained Traceability for a Live Lobster Supply Chain using Blockchain Technology

Product traceability has become essential in modern supply chain management, ensuring product safety, quality, and transparency. However, implementing traceability, especially for live biological products managed by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources, presents challenges. The balance between traceability performance and costs is critical for adoption. Recently, the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain technology has shown promise in revolutionizing traceability systems, offering unprecedented data granularity and integrity. Yet, few studies explore these technologies’ design within SME-dominated, live product supply chains. Addressing this gap, our study introduces a novel technological architecture and three data validation models: lightweight, detailed, and intermediate. We evaluated these models in a Canadian seafood supply chain, focusing on live lobster products, using simulation platforms. Our findings highlight a trade-off between traceability and operational costs, with the intermediate solution offering promising benefits without compromising cost-effectiveness.