The products that touch our lives daily make many stops as they progress through the supply chain from producer or manufacturer to customer. It’s largely a patchwork trail composed of mixed digital and paper transaction records rife with inefficiencies. Our innovative clients have a vision of how trusted information sharing and collaboration throughout the journey can deliver new efficiencies and value.

To celebrate our visionary clients, we commissioned five contemporary artists to interpret key blockchain objectives that these innovators achieved in their transformative work with us: consumer confidence and trust, transparent supply, food safety and provenance, sustainability and efficiency.

BlockpARTy is the result. It’s a five-part series of virtual events that spotlight the art, the artists and the innovators. Episode 5, which debuts on 14 October, features artist John Osgood and his visual interpretation of how everyday items travel from manufacturers to distributors to retailers to consumers.

Meet the artist

John Osgood is a contemporary painter, muralist and illustrator who grew up in Edmonds, Washington and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He weaves everything from pop culture to intimate family experiences into his paintings to preserve memories and emotions as moments in time.

The inspiration: Efficiency

Ninety percent of all goods move along international shipping routes. On their journey, they can pass through 30 different entities and 100 different people, generating 200 paper-based transactions. That manual effort adds a full 15 percent to the cost of international shipping. Systems often don’t talk to each other, forcing delays and missteps that can impact the entire supply chain, and at times, tarnish a brand’s relationship with their customer.

To overcome siloed information, one-up/one-down visibility, vendor management issues and more, our clients are using blockchain to create solutions and networks offering radical new levels of efficiency. With a single view of the truth across business partners, supply chain participants can replace manual legacy processes, reduce friction, remediate disputes and more.

The interpretation

In his work for BlockpARTy, titled Points of Efficiency, John traces the journey of everyday items on their route from manufacturers to distributors to retailers to consumers — all previously separate legs of the journey generating their own disparate data streams. With blockchain, those transactions and data streams now become visible to permissioned participants, delivering greater efficiency through faster, more precise responses to events across the supply chain.

“Learning about blockchain gives you a better sense of the products you see and the places you purchase items from — and how they get from point A to point B.” – John Osgood, artist

John’s work was filmed on exhibit at 111 Mina Gallery in San Francisco.

The visionaries

Alison Clafin is the Director of Business Development for GTD Solutions. Working in the industry since 2000, Alison has held various international management positions in ocean carrier and global logistics organizations across Europe, Latin America and North America. Experienced in sales management, strategic marketing, global logistics and supply chains, she is also passionate about sustainable business and sits on the business advisory board for an NGO committed to transforming an efficient and environmentally sustainable global logistics sector.

Vivian Berni, MPH, is a Director of Product Management within ThermoSafe, a unit of Sonoco, a leading global provider of temperature assurance packaging for the safe and efficient transport of pharmaceuticals, biologics, vaccines and other temperature sensitive products. She consults and designs product solutions that enhance customer satisfaction and success in the Life Sciences and Healthcare sector, all through the lens of digital interconnectivity. Vivian has worked with the Life Sciences and Healthcare transportation industry since 2009, playing key roles at DHL in product development, corporate strategy and innovation through digital transformation. She is passionate about helping, educating and supporting clients as they develop strategic plans. Currently, Vivian is implementing data-driven solutions that aid customers evolve their business.

Christopher Day is currently Director, Marketing and Innovation at Sonoco ThermoSafe, the global leader in temperature-controlled packaging for pharmaceuticals and life sciences. Chris is an experienced global executive who has led business units for multinationals like Tenneco and Silgan Holdings, as well as startups in both the technology and industrial space. His unique career path spans Wall Street and private equity, multiple segments in the packaging industry, as well as a stint in the White House. Chris received a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University and is distinguished as the youngest graduate of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

The conversation is moderated by Raj Rao, General Manager, Blockchain Platform Solutions, and me, Nigel Gopie, Director of AI Applications and Blockchain marketing, your series host. Join us for this opportunity to hear how our visionary clients are tackling inefficiencies in global trade and building solutions that bring partners together in radically new relationships cemented by blockchain.

This article first appeared 12 October 2020 on the IBM Blockchain Pulse blog.