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From YouTube: Hyperledger Supply Chain SIG: Surge

Description

Presentation of work done by Hyperledger Member Company - How Surge creates trust and enables Enterprise integration across Supply Chains with Marina Raicevic -co-founder

Surge is an Italian startup founded in 2018 and focused on Business solutions leveraging Hyperledger technology for digital Supply Chains. The software is already in market powering a large network of companies in the fashion luxury industry.

The challenge we decided to address is the combination of increasing complexity and regulatory / compliance requirements in Supply Chains where data is segregated in multiple and disconnected systems with the opportunities created by Hyperledger and Blockchain.

Slides available here: https://www.hyperledger.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Surge-pitch-Hyperledger-jan-21.pdf

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Hyperledger – Open Source Blockchain Technologies

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A

Beautiful hello, everybody welcome to today's hyper ledger supply chain special interest group uh webinar uh here the second for uh 2020.. uh Today we have marina and luca from surge tech over in italy. Right you'll tell us where in italy you are you guys uh work, uh probably virtually like the rest of us here. uh They're gonna present their uh solution based on hyper ledger uh here for the fashion industry.

A

So with that uh I shared with uh marina and luca that we go an hour and uh 20 30 minutes of presentation, she'll, probably say she's open for questions along the way. So you're welcome to do that. You good with that marina.

B

Yes, absolutely okay,.

A

Beautiful so um marino, well, we'll turn it over to you and uh you and luca, and let's roll.

B

Beautiful, thank you. Thank you tom. Thank you hyperledger for this beautiful opportunity. We are so excited to be part of uh hyperledger community and um I will present myself uh shortly. My name is marina richie and I'm a co-founder of uh sword company today with me. I have a luca ferrari and his owner. Let's start our presentation, I already shared my screen, so we can just start I'll start saying a few words about about our company. So company um is based in bologna. It's italy, uh town, beautiful town, by the way.

A

I think that's where the oldest university in the world is right: bologna, yes,.

B

A

There you go claim to fame.

B

Great and we created this company uh in 2018 uh just from the beginning, we started uh working remotely, so we can say that our company is absolutely uh covered resilient and uh so the fortune was the idea to to bring an international team based mostly in europe, working everybody like remotely from from just from the start, and uh we used um hyperledger fabric to create an enterprise solution.

B

Our main client is uh carrying eyewear. This company uh works in field of luxury guts and um our product is running um some weeks.

A

What's the name of the company, your main client.

B

Heading getting eyewear uh they're, um producing they're, designing and uh and uh retailing um eyewear, so.

A

Okay, got it: okay, so they'd be a competitor to luxon.

B

A

I think that's.

B

Everything you know it's like gucci, sunglasses and good.

A

Good, that's good, we're very interested in real life stories. So that's great that you have a client, that's using it.

B

Yeah, this is a complete real life story with up and downs, but uh with beautiful ants. So many companies uh are using our solutions and the this the we because of our solution. We had a great uh support of our investors, so we are really happy to see that more than 20 companies are using this solution.

B

So what was the point? um Looking at today's supply chains? We can see that they are quite complex and there are a lot of requirements, compliance and regulatory. I think nightmare of everybody working on supply chains and the main problem is the fact that companies are keeping their data separated isolated from other players in supply chains.

B

So, from the other side, there is a blockchain technology uh which gives huge opportunities for different ways to to collaborate um and looking at this, our idea was the possibility to enrich blockchain technology and to make solution which can um help the companies to to collaborate uh in um in a new way.

B

So um the our solution is uh front. Software in it is all about collaboration, connection and integration. So, for the first time, thanks to distributed ledger, these companies had the opportunity to share their data. Obviously, as people used to say, blockchain is not a solo flight, so first we need to uh create a consortium, but then just starting with three companies, one which produced brilliance, producing glance, another uh ascetics and the third one um certification institute.

B

We started uh study their processes, business processes and uh change them by by different workflows, which gave them um more more efficient collaboration and then search is putting blockchain technology as a layer between companies and and blockchains.

B

So it's possible to make uh this source of true inside the blockchain and um by building that in the end we are able to have a digital passport of a product. So product camp came in the first place in the center and this is the the our result. This is a result of our of this collaboration, because every single company has his own front and our solution is like blockchain um as a service. So it's running on cloud and subscription, it's not doesn't need any an implementation.

B

So um the fact is that every company is giving uh their part of of data and certificates or they can upload um tones of of documents um there. So the that's the the main goal, that's the main result, and why, first of all?

B

Because we live in the world where consumers are more more like say yes and the second thing, that is, that uh companies they can really communicate their values, uh their effort and their social responsibility for, for example, carrying um thanks to to front uh this year, could calculate their environmental profit and loss monitor value because they are. They are really sensitive about these, these these themes, so for them.

B

For the first time, it was possible to have some informations about their eyewear that they couldn't have in different way without mapping this supply chain, so by mapping the supply chain, changing workforce and process businesses process and by helping companies to collaborate.

B

In the end, we have the possibility to have every possible document uh certificate and, um let's say assets that we need for analysis for giving some some messages as a company, and it's really a nice, my story, so this is from my side. I hope that I was clear just I'm here. If you want to ask me something more about this case study, uh we will proceed with more technical details about solutions.

C

Okay, so thank you. Thank you, marina, and um let me say that, as as marina said, uh we have this idea this vision of putting the product at the center okay. So our core idea is, let's put the product at the center and let's ask everybody involved in the supply chain to collaborate, and what happens is that by this uh idea we can implement different solutions, so most of the companies now are doing pocs pilots for track and trace. This is one of the things we may do, but it's uh in reality is much wider.

C

What we can achieve with with this kind of solution- the first thing is, is the one that marina was was mentioning so creating this digital id digital passport of a product, a very sophisticated one, managing data and documents for every type of merchandise, thanks to collaboration through the supply chain. So all companies who collaborate diff across several tiers of the satellite chain can provide their data, their document, their information which gets aggregated in one single place.

C

Another example is a simple track and trace, and when I won't comment too much about that, because I mean there are probably one million case studies over the internet and uh and the another type of business solution is, the one marina was mentioning compliance and sustainability.

C

So uh we can ask, and we can ask companies to provide any type of information, such as composition of a specific of a specific product, and through this uh we can have information such as the country of origin of uh components of things that are maybe just a part of what we sell to the market.

C

So suppose it's packaging we can have the provenance of the of the cotton that was used uh to make the packaging or of any other uh animal fiber or so on, or or like that, or even uh asking um compliance compliance. Things like, for example, certificates, and so this is a this- is type of business solutions. We we have implemented and we can do with our solution uh marty if you can move to the next slide. Please.

C

Thank you and what are the benefits? We we expect. The first one is to reduce time to market. um What happens in most supply chains is that uh uh information has to go when you release a new product through several tiers of supply chain. So maybe you sell the product to the market, but you have a supplier that is doing something and this supplier is working with their suppliers and those suppliers are working with different companies providing raw materials components and so on and many times when the new design is made.

C

Unless you are airbus or boeing or a super large multinational, you don't have such a system such a very powerful plm, where all the different years of the supply chain are collaborating, and so what happens is that at the end of the day, uh because of versioning because of changes in the design of the trump product uh and the supply chain may end up in a situation of a lack of alignment, so someone may be on version one while others are maybe on version three.

C

At the end of the day, when the final assembly happens, uh simply components do not fit and asking everybody to collaborate, we can. We can be sure that the products at the end of the day are more compliant. um We can also reduce uh with this really cost, because it's much easier to put together information and documents about a specific product and also improve margins, because that, because companies across the supply chain become more efficient, so they can save time they were spending just to upload and download excel files.

C

Pdf documents, images uh making sure certifications were there, because they just have to go point and click and find find the document. Then we have also a screenshot of how the application looks like and how easy it is to retrieve the information uh mari next slide, please.

C

So this is an example of a thing that we have uh done in reality. This is for traceability of um of eyewear.

C

As marina was saying, so we have moved across several layers of the supply chain, moving from uh the product itself to the um companies who actually manufacture it, to the suppliers of raw materials and components and to um and to certification authorities, and this uh enables, uh at the end of the day, the distributor to have in one place all the information, be technical data, uh be documents and, and so on um next slide. Please another example was a study uh we did uh for track and trace for leather for leather goods.

C

uh This is something probably everybody. Everybody has is quite familiar with, so it's not different. uh What is different is uh the way we implement it that we are going to see in a second uh next slide. Please- and this is just uh a graphical uh explanation of how logically the solution may work so suppose you have an all sailor or a rear retailer working with the three tiers of a supply chain. We can enable work, laws and data and data processes, data exchange document exchange across all those tiers.

C

We can also enable thanks clearly to blockchain technologies. Workloads uh wait a second, please workflows, which, uh which end up uh end up being exclusively of, for example, tier 2 and tier 3, which do not involve, for example, the the final sailor. So companies get enabled, and they can also do uh things which are not connected to the to the final product or to the final uh to the final merchandise.

A

Luka can ask a question here on this sure.

C

A

So what you're saying and then going back a couple of charts, it sounds like either. You can have folks directly put data into this solution or, if it's already in some existing environment, some database whatever or set of systems, tms or wms, etc. You can, you can pull it out of. There should should the uh yes, okay.

C

Exactly this is exactly what we do, so every company has information in their systems. As you were saying, we can take it from there put it in the solution.

C

It gets aggregated in one single place which, at the end of the day, gets aggregated to the final product in a standard scenario, and then it is uh available for the final for the final distributor or uh or retailer, and the additional benefit is that all the companies involved in the supply chain get a benefit from this, because they have access to the system and they can clearly see uh the data they are allowed to see.

C

So it's uh there is a strong security implemented, but suppose there is something that is relevant for a company that is in uh tier two, that it comes from a company that that is in tier three. They can get it uh right away because everybody has access.

A

So let me ask you a different question here I mentioned earlier: I'm a big fan of standards. uh We have some folks on the line here. Also big fans of standards. Do you use a standard method or do you normalize it within your environment? Or how do you get everybody.

C

A

Page on a of a data model and then okay, I did my ideal world. I'd love a process model.

C

Yeah, this is an excellent question. This this goes directly back to data and the worldwide standards that we have in 2021. So if there is something like upc provided by gsi, just one- yes, we use it. If there is an iso standard like for country for country codes, yes, we use it same for currencies and and so on.

C

Then there are some business domains which are very, very, very specific to the industry, and in that case we need to do data modeling, because there are some things that we end up uh finding out that do not even have any kind of taxonomy in the business. So we need to do that so to get back to the point. Yes, whenever there is a standard, there is a global standard. We we use it like. We will see it in a second. uh The way.

C

The the code that we use to uh basically present eyewear is the upc or yayan depends on the way the companies want to use the layout of their screenshot of their of their dashboards. uh In some other cases we are not that lucky and we have to do data modeling, because international standards are not there.

A

C

And, in addition to this, uh whenever there is something which we cannot directly refer to an international standard um like a unit of measure, as we were saying, or a country code or a currency, um then what we do is uh in the product. We have a data layer which does conversion, so we define what is the gold standard for the for the specific for that specific industry and everything gets converted to that to that cool standard that becomes the standard of everybody when working in the when working in the in the system.

C

Okay, so uh thank you for the question by the way, uh so this is a very simply out how the final result looks like. So it's a very simple dashboard. It's a web web web web interface.

C

uh What the users get is this super rich dashboard where, as we were saying, uh the typical implementation is the final product is uh actually uh an aggregator of all the information that is provided by every company, so in production like for this specific dashboard, I don't know how many columns we are managing. um I don't know it could be even more than 100 there is there are.

C

There is very sophisticated management of the aggregation of columns and of sections of the product because uh because clearly the information as as you go up the supply chain and you integrate layers and layers gets very, very, very rich and, uh and that ends up also in a bill of material concepts and and so on, but for the user, then it's so easy, so they need a specific certificate for that specific product.

C

They just put a filter, go to the specific column, click a link and they can get the document in a very simple way or if they need data they can quickly export it to excel. We are also integrated with uh business objects uh for for for a data, analysis and uh mari. If you can go to the next slide, please we also what we also do is uh document management, so there is very strict interconnection between the product and the documents related to it, and we also in some cases, uh do some sophisticated document.

C

Management with versioning and expiration dates depends on the type of document and um and on the business and on the business requirement.

C

But what I want to what I want to convey is basically this message of this ability to use blockchain and our technology as a very big way to aggregate information and put it in a synergic way uh and present it in a synergic way to the to the to the final user and to the customer- and um I I mean sometimes uh um being let's say clearly using a big example, but I think it's it's good to use big examples. I I try to give the message that this is a bit the sales force.

C

uh What we want to do is the salesforce of products. Okay, so as says for sells the message of customer centricity, we give the message of product centricity, but product scientific centricity is more complex, it's more complex, because the product data is a result of a collaboration of many many companies, and so I think blockchain has enabled this this concept, and we are trying really to achieve that and to go in that direction. uh Marty if you can move to the next slide.

B

Yes, absolutely, I would just like to add that um we apply this solution to our industry luxury industry, but it's absolutely uh easy to apply it to other type of industries like automotive or food and beverage. So that's also the the opportunity to use this solution everywhere in every industry, where there are complex supply chains, complex process, something to to change and to to make a possible a different way to collaborate.

C

Thank you. Let's move on to the next page, I think that we're going to have also some technology at some point. If I remember the presentation, okay,.

A

C

A

Before we go there before we go there, luca, let's just give folks an opportunity if they want to buzz in here, we'll give them uh 15 seconds and see what questions they might have on the business solution side. I've had folks. I have one question.

A

Can you hear me so um so so the mapping? What what are your solutions to mapping.

C

uh Yeah basically, what we do, as I was mentioning before, is that we have an integrated mapping layer which does basically the following: whenever there is, uh whenever there is a uh an international standard, we take data from the systems of the different companies and we map it to the international standard.

C

Suppose someone is using a country code that is not compliant with the iso format with we, we map it and we map it in our let's say integration layer, which is a very light middleware while right, uh while, if there is no international standard, we that we can use, um then we do mapping across our against our libraries.

C

There is a very powerful business concept in the system. That is the library concept. That is uh like the jargon, the vocabulary of the application for every field that is structured. So that is not a comment, for example, so we use that we we have this powerful business tool that we call libraries and in the integration layer whatever what we do is we map every every data against the library, so every company working inside the system for a specific field will always work with the library item.

A

Right so you have you, have the library in a database and you use shapefile and you shape. Yes,.

B

To to drive to drive the technology yeah.

C

Geo space, correct yeah, just let me uh since you said something- and I want just to uh give you a to be a little bit more precise- what we do not keep libraries in a database. uh This our solution has no database uh apart from the blockchain and for caching. So what we do is we keep it in github, and we have read this to do like the caching and the integration.

C

uh The reason for this is that, because we don't want to have anything persistent in our in our software, so whatever data that is, a business data is stored inside hyperledger, whatever is like uh functional to the application stays in github, just to be more precise: okay, a private github yeah, it's always private data, but it's magic managed differently. So if it is, uh if it is technical to the application like a library, it stays in github.

C

If it is business, data like uh like data about a frame or a weight or anything like that, it stays in hyperledger right.

B

Yes, and just for people who doesn't uh know this concept lately from very beginning, we, we saw this problem because if you think only about colors, every company is uh calling callers in different way. For me, maybe free is red for other companies like rosso or maybe air x, or something like that. So just for for the colors. It wasn't so so simple.

B

So we started thinking immediately about okay, how we can fix this, so the the fact is that they're continuing uh putting um their their documents their data as they ever as they um always did in the same way. And there then our system is, is.

C

Is there a decompression.

B

Is there to to to change this? So they don't need to change their way to work, and that's that's a great thing for for companies, because because they don't want to change their way to to do their business right.

A

Good anybody else out there with any uh questions.

B

Hi, yes, uh this is alicia. I have a question about something said earlier marina. You mentioned that the client can calculate the environmental profit and loss. Can you speak a little bit more to how they're doing that.

C

Yeah, maybe maybe.

B

Website of uh caring, you can see how they calculate like how it's possible to calculate all the the monetary value of of uh profit and loss. But the fact is that, for some components for some uh items they are using like um paper, which uh is um um raciclide.

B

Okay, yes, sorry, I don't have or no and so or maybe plastic, or they want to make sure that for some acetate they use less water than past four years. So that's the way by mapping supply chain. You can see on certificates. You can see on documents how they make this product, because otherwise you can't have these information from your suppliers. You can even ask them. I mean like how many how many liters of uh liters of water you use for doing that.

B

Like uh I don't know, I don't care so in this way, it's possible to to consult of all these um materials and to prove uh their effort. It's not just a word. We are green company. No, we can show that by seeing what our suppliers and their suppliers do is.

C

There, a third party.

B

Is there anyone going in third party to audit to confirm the data that those third-party suppliers and.

C

Yeah suppliers yeah yeah, uh yes,.

C

Yes, the internal uh sustainability department of caring is checking all that information and to be even even more precise about about what we do. uh It gets a bit technical, but when you want to do the environmental profit and loss, you have to go at the very bottom of the product. So that's what we do so we break down the structure of the product up to the raw material.

C

If you know if it is cardboard what we ask the suppliers better, the let's say the manufacturer of the cardboard, because it is directly involved to provide- is the weight of the cardboard used for that specific product, the country of origin and all the other technical aspects which may be useful to do. The calculation of the environmental profit and loss.

B

Thank you for explaining that that's.

A

B

A

Good anybody else, they're very good questions. Folks.

C

uh Yeah, thank you for those for those questions. Clearly I don't want to. I don't want to uh give you a wrong impression, so it is not. You know it is not immediate, so it takes a lot of work to get there. So it's a lot of implementation, a lot of analysis, because clearly you have to break it down really to the bottom, so so that at the end of the day, is it's feasible and it's achievable. Okay,.

A

I I could believe that luca, as uh yesterday, if anyone's familiar with green biz, they have a series of newsletters lisa. You may be familiar since you asked that question. They have a new newsletter, uh basically green fin. I think it's called they just started yesterday and one of the two things that they pointed out as the top storylines are going to follow is and green.

A

Biz is a big sustainability, uh media organization, the two things they're they're, two top story lines where around uh standards and two around data collection um and exactly the kind of things that you guys are talking about in alicia. You asked about and the difficulties associated with that so uh there's actually something for those of you out there, I'm near and dear to my heart and I'm happy to talk about it. So with that, let's go back here to luca and marina here.

C

Yep yeah, so I will click quickly move on to the technical side. So from the beginning, our let's say there is one big concept that is behind our technology is that we did not build a gigantic system that is on top of a distributed system. So there is, uh there is no bmoth, but there is a different uh technological concept that is a distributed application. So from the beginning, what we wanted to do was a conceptually light application that is given to every player.

C

So suppose you have 10 companies, 50 companies collaborating, they will have their hyperledger peers, maybe not all of them depending on the size of the company, uh because we also enable sharing peers, which is a concept that maybe we can. We can uh discuss.

A

Separately, luca, just wait when you, when you mention hyperledder ledger, can you specify what parts of hyperledger you're using yeah we use fabric.

C

Okay, we we used to use in the very beginning. Also you may you may remember that composer, that we use as a rest server, but we later we dismissed that and we developed our own technology also in that area. So, basically, we use fabric.

A

Okay, great, thank you. Thank you.

C

A

Any of the other projects out of hyperledger is everything fabric.

C

No, we are using only fabric at this point in time. We are also looking into the other into the other projects at this moment, but the only one that we are using in production is fabric.

A

And that's quite fine. Thank you. Everyone is clear in their mind what we're talking about here.

C

Okay, thank you, and so uh the idea was to create those uh those uh applications distributed. Applications that we we give we provide to every company and those applications do many things like they do: user management they do. Caching, they do they manage notifications. They manage uh the data data mapping, the data mapping layer, they manage imports and exports, they manage rest apis and and so on.

C

So you can think about this as a fully packaged front-end and back-end uh application, which is able to speak at the same time with fabric and with customers providing a web interface or web books or or apis and, at the same time uh connect to github for libraries and clearly for the code repository which is having quite basic, but also to uh amazon and azure, where we store the off-chain off-chain files, which are clearly asked and say well, we save the ash into the blockchain, but we keep the we keep the file outside we integrate with.

C

uh We integrate this with, uh for example, with the azure active directory for user management and also for the key vault and and so on. So so in a nutshell, this is our technology. So is a new concept of business application that is not uh that is not a single large piece of software is a lean software that is provided to each so to each company.

C

Also the configuration of each application changes depending on the profile of the company, so depending on what kind of company they are, we divide them into, let's say sets or buckets of companies depending on the typology they will get but will also get different, different uh different functionalities, and clearly each company has its own configuration for the for the data layer, okay uh mari, um in detail.

C

This is uh this is what our uh software, which we call front, does so it's basically, as I was saying, identity management, the user and machine interface it integrates with the fabric. Does all the data layer manages? The security which is super sophisticated is completely proprietary. It's a it's based, it's completely written in chain code, and um it's interesting. I mean uh we don't have enough time today, but maybe there is another occasion we can talk in detail about how we implemented security, which is not at organization level. It is at user level.

C

So it's uh it's quite quite sophisticated. Actually, uh we, it also manages notifications uh because clearly, when you have cross-company workflows, you need to uh let them let people know that something is happening because clearly it is a lot of things happening to the blockchain and we also so we capture the events and we route them to the appropriate companies depending on on some settings and it does uh the dashboarding and the caching I was.

C

I was mentioning uh for the staging part of the data, which is a part of our processes and um uh next slide uh next slide. So just to make you understand, our business model works. Maybe, okay. I can go on with that matt, if you're. Okay with that.

C

Okay, I think she is uh basically this is uh this is yeah. This is uh the way we work on on the business on the business side, so there is a cloud subscription for the software. uh Nothing is uh companies and don't have to install anything, even if we support uh hybrid scenarios. So if, if someone is, is very eager to have his software in the data center, it is, it is possible.

C

We provide professional services uh clearly for developing the business case uh and the business scenario, design for process design and so on.

C

We provide support, uh which is very important because uh because, as we see that when the networks tend to extend, users need a lot of lot of assistance, um just just maybe for autos or for small bug, fixing and so on, and another thing that we do is is run uh the applications, because what we saw is that most of the companies really do not want so much to run, uh to run hyperledger or to run our instance of the system.

C

So we help them run running those uh those systems in their cloud or in their cloud in their cloud subscriptions.

B

Yeah just to say about cloud subscription that cost depends on how how big the company is. Why um this? Because we wanted to allow also uh small companies to be part of this uh supply chain, uh let's say revolution and it's obvious that they don't have the same wallet for ita projects as big multinational companies. So that's why uh this cost depends on on uh on how big the company is in supply chain.

C

Yep- and so just uh so uh so almost the end of the of the presentation, so a few a few remarks um next slide, so uh why we think I mean we have a good value proposition. uh First of all I mean um this is not a custom custom development, so we have created a product that we uh enhance, improve and evolve on on a daily basis.

C

So I think there is a lot of value with this, so companies know that they are not embarking into something that would become very difficult to maintain in time, because the software is constantly managed and improved by us.

C

We are. We also help companies manage their risk because we have a success stories, so we know how to help small and big companies managing this type of this type of situation, um and also uh we also, we think we can also avoid dead ends, because we have seen many situations where uh there are complexities which may lead to project faders uh like mentioning. I would like to mention a few of them like reasonable, ui and ux, so the application has to be usable has to be faster.

C

You need to provide the tools that the users need to work on a daily basis like excel integration. That is so important, like filtering, like sorting like being able to personalize the dashboards in the way that that are uh convenient for them, like security, which is super important as to be super uh super detailed, so that everybody can see only what they are allowed to see performance, which is, uh at the same time very important.

C

So we have developed an entire propriety layer so that when we provide data, so when our application reads data, it does not read directly from uh from fabric but is reading from a cache stage from a cache layer which is helping a lot in terms of performance and it's also floating the blockchain from workload that is not necessary, like also uh studying.

C

But this is clearly, I think, pretty pretty understandable for everybody doing a good design of the blockchain node architecture, so making it uh making it uh reasonable and making sure that the software is uh stable and that integration works. That the vocabulary is uh is uh is clear for everybody, and also because our company is reliable. We've been pretty successful so far and we have investors who have trusted us and have provided the funds to be sure that we can. We can be resilient over time and we can also be resilient for for our.

C

Customers: okay,.

B

Our presentation is finished. Thank you a lot for your attention for being here and seeing our solution and our ideas.

A

All right, marina and luca. Thank you. This is very good. I appreciate you sharing also some of the ideas here. I have a quick question here. uh Maybe if you could describe, let's take the caring example, since you talked about that, how did was this kind of a top down, they kind of said, hey suppliers, you need to get bored with this or was it more of a holistic type of let's work together, type of thing and then that kind of gets into the question: how many nodes are there?

A

How are they doing the governance of the set of chains there yeah.

C

B

You I will give you the first part off of.

A

Okay, good thanks.

B

Er, I think that is really unrealistic to think that people, like 15 companies, will say. Oh, let's work together. uh It's sort of.

A

A dream can't I.

B

Yeah, yes, but things uh can start also um slowly easily, just with couple companies and then that's the power of this of this solution that it's so flexible. So you can you can in every moment you can add other companies at other suppliers, uh so it's not necessary to to start together.

B

uh Actually, maybe is more efficient to start one by one, just adding one reality after after other, and um it just changed um some processes, but it's it's so easy, easy to add or to to just cut some. Some of these uh companies.

A

Okay, good, so it kind of kind of started started from caring and then it kind of expanded out is what you're saying.

B

Yes, uh okay, maybe maybe look uh we'll be back on these yeah.

A

English yeah.

C

Well, that's good yeah yeah I mean this is this is a this is exactly a good explanation. It started from caring and then it spread out and clearly smaller companies in the beginning were having, let's say more in our time, understanding the the benefits, but then they they gradually understood uh in the course of action because they were, they were actually understanding that their own. Let's say, internal systems and processes were not so, let's say uh robust and that that was a great opportunity to implement to improve them.

C

Some of vandals are also using the solution as a document management system, because some smaller companies didn't have any any of that. So it's so simple. Now for that suppose you have a supplier uploading, a catalog of metal components like uh I don't know uh something in metal like a or anything like that. It becomes very easy to use the system to aggregate all the all the documents and the information for that, um and then tom I apologize, but I forgot what was the second part of the question.

A

Number of nodes in the uh implementation.

C

ah Yes, this is a great question, so now we're running with five nodes of fabric, so there are three nodes for the most important companies.

C

One is for the certification authority and one is a shared node and we we use this uh concept of share nodes because uh because clearly we have implemented a very strong security layer in our application. uh On top of that, that is, as I was saying, as is anyway written into the blockchain.

C

So it's not it's not easy to, let's say: go around it, because all the rules are written into the into the chain code, and so we use the concept of of shared nodes in order to, let's say um avoid uh avoid a growth of the of the network that is too costly for the for the companies.

A

Okay, good, thank you and.

B

uh um Luca you, you mentioned uh certification first uh about like a plus for a company, for example, we have dice in this consortium and they are, they are um producing lands. Okay, you can imagine what what it means for a company to have the possibility to ask a certification for every single land and just on on there or on our system without pdf without mails. Without you know, because a lot of times as info for, for example, um for american um from any kind.

C

Of american market market.

B

Market, yes, uh they need to provide uh this uh bullet test.

B

This is a special um testing where the metal bullet um um is falling uh on online, yes or less and in and if uh this last uh remains um uh whole, they can sell this uh this hour uh in america, so many many times they they needed to to uh make another test because they lost that that certification or they don't remember- who managed that or sometimes there is no anymore.

B

The person who worked on that type of certification and you lose all the documentation so for for them they they understood that there are a lot of plus for them. That's why companies uh wanted to to be part of this, uh uh of this um legend and ecosystem.

A

Good. Thank you. What other questions out there folks from uh we're coming we're coming to the top of the hour, so get your questions in.

A

A

Okay, well hearing none, I think we'll stop here a little bit beforehand, but that that's great, uh marina and luca. Thank you very much for presentation. I I see uh kevin's thoughts and I see ben's thoughts here in the chat that, uh like the session here, said great session, so uh thank.

C

A

Thanks for sharing with us, uh the folks that are on the phone here, uh please take a look at my email from a little bit earlier to the uh to this to the sig email server. Basically, hey we're still looking for input on. Where do we focus this group here for the new year year, 2021.?

A

uh That was the subject of the last call and mark, and I are looking for your input to decide where we're going to go in addition to doing webinars like this one here. So with that uh thanks everybody enjoy the rest of your day, uh whatever it looks like weather-wise in your place and uh we'll look forward to uh seeing you again a couple weeks from now thanks everybody.

B

Thank you, bye.

A

Thank you thank.

B

A

B

Thank you have a nice day.

A

B

I'll share stuff here.

B

B