UNISOT, PSU China team up for supply chain business intelligence

UNISOT continues to bring more integrity to product supply chains with its blockchain-based tracing system. Recently, it revealed a new partnership with leading Chinese business intelligence and research firm PSU China, which will combine its data with UNISOT’s tools like Smart Digital Twins and Digital Product Passports.

PSU China has become a trusted name in business security and risk management since its establishment in 2006. It serves several international businesses on these issues and provides operational research and manual audits to guarantee accuracy.

UNISOT’s blockchain-based structure will allow PSU China to automate and streamline its services and build further trust with both companies’ clients by making the data they work with more readily accessible.

“They are a great partner as they have very good reputation and business network in China,” UNISOT CEO Stephan Nilsson told CoinGeek. “We supplement their manual audit and security work with our technical Supply Chain traceability and digital product passport solutions.”

PSU China’s team has “a robust network in China and comprehensive understanding of the local landscape, enabling them to provide unmatched operational insights and verifiable data.” Its services also include protecting brand security and operational continuity, as well as helping supply chain companies assess vulnerabilities and develop mitigation strategies. Much of its work for clients involves navigating the EU regulatory landscape and gathering auditable data for due diligence on issues like ethical labor standards and environmental compliance.

Its team is made up of professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement, corporate security, and risk management.

As UNISOT describes it, its blockchain systems combined with PSU China’s intelligence will ensure international companies maintain transparency and accountability at every stage of the supply chain. This, in turn, builds consumer trust and protects brands’ reputations while at the same time satisfying new European compliance requirements.

The demand for ever-more supply chain information

Both governments and the consuming public are beginning to demand more from the companies that produce the physical goods circulating in their economy. This contrasts past efforts when attractive packaging, a well-known brand, and appropriate pricing were the main avenues to success. Today’s more information-hungry era wants to know how and where products are made, what went into making them, and even some background into the origins of those ingredients and the companies that produced them.

A secondary, but no less important demand is for that information to be up-to-date and trustworthy. Physical labels placed on packaging have exhausted their effectiveness. There have been numerous cases over the years where origin labels were misleading; health and environmental benefits were exaggerated or made outright fraudulently. Thanks in part to updated regulations but also shifts in consumer culture, there’s a need for detailed supply chain information to be verifiable.

One example is the European Union’s new Digital Product Passport (DPP) set of regulations. The new system, which is being phased in gradually via select industries in the coming years, requires manufacturers to be more transparent about the materials/ingredients they use and even the manufacturing process itself. The regulations cover not only the origins of every product, but its entire lifecycle—for non-food items, consumers must also know how to dispose of a product responsibly when it’s no longer needed.

UNISOT has already begun onboarding new users for its purpose-built DPP module. While Europe’s rules have the potential to create bureaucratic burdens for manufacturers with fewer resources, an automated system running on a scalable blockchain removes most of that burden by allowing supply chain steps to be logged easily and provenance records produced instantly in a format that satisfies regulators.

Eventually, the regulations will cover all products sold in the EU, with a market of almost 450 million people and a GDP of around US$19.4 trillion.

For policymakers, this helps meet the sustainability goals they’ve committed their countries to. For consumers, there’s reassurance that the products they’re buying meet their higher quality standards. Most importantly, manufacturers are more accountable for their marketing claims about their processes, reducing the risks of “greenwashing,” mislabeling, or passing off lower-quality goods by stamping them with quality-name brands.

Watch: Improving supply chain traceability with UNISOT’s Stephan Nilsson