Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008

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Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,

and Complexity
journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/joitmc

Blockchain traceability model in the coffee industry

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Andry Alamsyah , Sri Widiyanesti, Puspita Wulansari, Eva Nurhazizah, Andrieta Shintia Dewi,
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Dadan Rahadian, Dian Puteri Ramadhani, Muhammad Naufal Hakim, Prenzeline Tyasamesi
School of Economic and Business, Telkom University, Bandung 40257, Indonesia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: As one of the most popular drinks in the world, coffee has limitations in its complex and opaque supply chain. Consumers
Traceability have difficulty verifying coffee quality according to the price they pay. However, innovative technologies such as
Blockchain technology blockchain emerge with the potential to support the coffee supply chain to be more transparent and traceable. Blockchain
Supply chain technology is a distributed database that allows for secure, transparent, and tamper-proof record-keeping, which makes it an
Coffee industry
ideal tool for tracking the movement of coffee beans throughout the supply chain, from farmers to roasters to retailers. Each
Quality assurance
step in the coffee supply chain could be logged and tracked using blockchain, thus supporting greater transparency.
Traceability would make it easier to identify and track any issues or irregularities in the supply chain. We propose a model
to transform a coffee industry supply chain business process into a blockchainable workflow. In addition, an application
was developed to allow each stakeholder in the supply chain to contribute to the data collection and monitor the status of
each coffee batch. The application prototype was implemented and evaluated in one of the coffee industries in Indonesia.
This research will benefit farmers in getting fair prices and end-consumers getting quality assurance.

1. Introduction
The coffee industry is a global industry worth billions of dollars. They are
responsible for producing, processing, and marketing coffee beans and coffee
products. The industry employs millions of people around the world
(Fairtrade Foundation, 2023). The coffee supply chain involves many sta-
keholders, from farmers to roasters to retailers. They begin with coffee
farmers who grow and harvest coffee beans. The coffee beans are then sold to
coffee roasters, who roast the beans and package them for sale. The coffee is
then sold to coffee shops, grocery stores, and online retailers. The long and
often different handling mechanisms that depend on the end product re-
quirement led to a complex and often an opaque process. When we cannot
collaboratively verify the process, it risks exposure to low product quality
(Voora et al., 2022).
In general, the coffee industry is facing many challenges, including
overproduction, volatile prices, and sustainability issues. Overproduction of
coffee beans has led to lower prices and margins for farmers, while the in-
dustry has also struggled to find a way to produce coffee sustainably. In ad-
dition, the coffee industry is facing increasing competition from other bev-
erages, such as tea and energy drinks. However, in this research, we focus the
research on quality assurance which can be solved using traceability features
from blockchain technology. There is often a disconnect between the different
players, which can lead to inefficiencies and waste. An efficient supply chain
that is better coordinated between various stakeholders is needed. A techno-
logical solution is required in order to help track the movement of coffee beans
and other products throughout the supply chain. Additionally, increasing
communication and collaboration between the different players can help im-
prove the coffee supply chain's efficiency, thus guaranteeing the coffee quality
(Marcus et al., 2022).
Another important aspect of traceability features is the benefit for farmers,
who often struggle to get a fair price for their beans due to the complex and
opaque nature of the supply chain. With blockchain, farmers could track their
beans' movement and ensure they receive a fair product price. Blockchain
could also help to improve food safety in the coffee supply chain (Yacoub and
Castillo, 2022). For example, if there was a food safety incident at a roastery,
blockchain could trace the affected beans back to the farm where they were
grown. The mechanism would allow for quick and effective containment of
any food safety issues. Overall, blockchain can potentially transform the coffee
supply chain for the better. By increasing transparency and traceability,
blockchain could help improve coffee farmers' lives and ensure that consumers
enjoy safe and delicious coffee.
Blockchain technology combines two primary disciplines of the distributed
system and cryptography to form a distributed database that allows for secure,
transparent, and tamper-proof record-keeping. In this sense, the information

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: andrya@telkomuniversity.ac.id (A. Alamsyah).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joitmc.2023.100008
Received 3 January 2023; Received in revised form 10 February 2023; Accepted 20 February 2023
Available online 1 March 2023
2199-8531/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Prof JinHyo Joseph Yun. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
cannot be changed or deleted, thus building trust between stakeholders without
needing a central authority such as government entities. Blockchain tech-
nology was born from the need to empower peer-to-peer transactions.
Therefore, we can trust the mechanisms without needing additional bodies to
be a guarantor (Li et al., 2021).
Several blockchain advantages in the context of the coffee industry can be
listed as follows. First, a reduction of overall costs since there is no need for
third-party intermediaries. Second, improved security, because the information
is stored in a decentralized network of computers, making it exceedingly
difficult to hack. Third, a faster transaction, following no need for third-party
approval; Fourth, an increased efficiency, considering that it can help to
streamline processes and make them more efficient. However, the main
drawback for blockchain implementations is scalability issues compared to the
traditional database, especially facing real-time transaction demand.
This research answers the primary objective of blockchain technology
adoption in the coffee industry supply chain by answering how to transform
the existing supply chain into the blockchainable one. To answer this question,
we conduct research on one of the small and medium enterprises size company
in Indonesia. The company provides high-quality coffee beans for export
purposes. While the market needs the guarantee of coffee beans quality, the
company itself needs to consolidate to a more scalable and sustainable busi-
ness process. Thus, a blockchainable supply chain operation is inevitable. We
organized the paper into a literature review in Section 2, the research meth-
odology in Section 3, the result and discussion in Section 4, and finally, the
conclusion and suggestion in Section 5.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Coffee industry process
The coffee industry supply chain consists of many stakeholders, where the
leading actor commonly is the coffee processor, responsible for treating har-
vested products into refined coffee beans. Several steps are needed to process
coffee from the farmers to the final product. The processors engineered the
process to customize the coffee to meet the need of the end product. First,
green coffee beans are delivered to the facility and stored in containers such as
hoppers until roasting time. The second step is to clean the beans of impurities
and mix the beans with other types of coffee beans to make a specific taste of
coffee. The third process is bean roasting, then cooling before the off-gassing
process. To make ground coffee, the beans are ground first before it passes
through the off-gassing process. Then, the off-gassing process is proceeded to
clear impurities, i.e., diacetyl, 2,3-pentanedione, carbon monoxide gas, and
carbon dioxide gas that is naturally produced during the roasting process
(LeBouf et al., 2020). Lastly, the ground coffee beans are packaged in
permeable or one-way valves bags; after that, the coffee is ready for sale.
Tracking the coffee supply chain is uncommon, this is due to the lack literacy
of in using the right technology. Though tracing is needed, usually it is done in
a non-decentralized manner, which poses a risk of node failure and is less
transparent.
2.2. Blockchain technology
Blockchain technology has been around since 2009, and it was first in-
troduced in a white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchain is a technology
capable of connecting several blocks of data through an encrypted connection
in a distributed network; thus, the blockchain is also known as distributed
ledger technology (Freni et al., 2022). There are several attributes of block-
chain, first, is data inserted in the block, and second is hash which is cryp-
tography whose creation is ever-changing. Lastly, a consensus that acts as a
block verifying mechanism, i.e., proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. The men-
tioned attributes create blockchain characteristics: immutable data records,
tamper resistance, traceability features, cryptographic security, and decen-
tralization (Wang et al., 2021). In addition, a blockchain network may have a
smart contract, a list of codes executable in a particular blockchain network.
As its name suggests, the contracts will only proceed with transactions auto-
matically if certain conditions are met. The attributes of blockchain and the
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Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
existence of smart contracts in the network point out the strong point com-
pared to the traditional database. Yet, blockchain is not a general-purpose
technology since there are aspects where the conventional database is better
(Chowdhury et al., 2018).
The first implementation of blockchain technology was peer-to-peer
transactions of cryptocurrency, and the first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin.
Following the birth of Bitcoin was the global financial crisis (The Evolution of
the Crypto Economy, 2022), where banks' liquidity problems spread over the
whole system in a relatively short period (Lotfi et al., 2020). Cryptocurrencies
are a familiar object for most people since they have bloomed in recent years.
Fleck recap that before the end of the first semester of 2022, the number of
existing cryptocurrencies reach almost 20.000 and has risen tremendously in
the past three years (Alamsyah et al., 2022a), making them an example of
blockchain technology implementation on a global scale. This innovation has
evolved and presently possesses the ability to represent assets in the form of
digital tokens on a decentralized digital platform. Thus, we could assign
ownership of these assets to parties in a tamper-proof environment, it even led
to a new type of economy that we gradually changed into soon, the token
economy (Sunyaev et al., 2021).
Blockchain technology successfully attracted lots of attention since it is an
underlying technology of cryptocurrencies. However, the implementation of
blockchain technology is broader than just the financial industry. Studies have
explored using blockchain to secure records in various industries. Shuaib et al
(Shuaib et al., 2020). have suggested using blockchain to create a tamper-proof
land registry system for government asset management, and Panda and Sata-
phaty (Panda and Satapathy, 2021) have proposed an anti-counterfeiting system
for the pharmaceutical industry. (Baygin et al., 2022). have created a shipping
management system that solves payment and traceability issues by combining
blockchain and REFID, which showed significant financial and workforce
benefits. Alamsyah et al (Alamsyah et al., 2022b). have designed a blockchain-
based traceability system for the growing halal meat industry in Indonesia.
Additionally, blockchain technology has the potential to transform talent re-
cruitment by providing verifiable credentials through secure blockchain records
(Sulaiman et al., 2022).
Based on the mentioned example of blockchain-based systems above, we
can deduce that a blockchain is a tool for operations in the business value
chain, specifically on their supply chain. In addition, we can infer that
blockchain prevents information asymmetry from happening (Mishra et al.,
2021). The current study will discuss blockchains in the supply chain in the
next section.
2.3. Blockchain traceability and supply chain management
Recently, the need for traceability information for companies, consumers,
and even the government has increased because it relates to a product's quality
and safety issues. Traceability systems allow the tracking of products by
providing information about the product, such as originality, components, or
location during production and distribution (Lu and Xu, 2017). Traceability
has become increasingly critical for companies since it is a form of compliance
with rules and regulations; it’s not simply about ensuring the product’s ori-
ginality or logistic optimization (Thakur et al., 2020).
As mentioned above, traceability is the capability of the system to trace the
product’s originality, components, or locations in the supply chain.
Government regulations have forced industries to implement traceability
systems, such as the food industry (Hader et al., 2022). The same conditions
apply to coffee businesses; traceability is in demand to make the information
of processes throughout the supply chain more transparent for the stake-
holders. Thus, provide the end-consumer details on the plantation which
planted and harvested the coffee beans, the roasting company that processed
them, and the retailers that sold them. Traceability is an obligation to protect
and ensure the product’s safety and quality throughout supply chains. Trace-
ability in supply chains provides transparency on the product’s sources and the
process it has been through (Tan and Ngan, 2020).
Furthermore, supply chain traceability can increase efficiency and visibility
(Hajipour et al., 2019). Traceability will bring significant effects on companies
if accompanied by excellent coordination throughout the processes in the
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
Fig. 1. The model diagram of the research.
companies. The perfect coordination between chains in the supply chain ought
to increase its performance effectively.
Consumers demand assurance in their consumed products, starting from
their composition and safety. Safety issues mainly occur in the production
processes/environment (Lin et al., 2018). Overlying pesticides, additives, or
heavy metal substances in chemical fertilizers can influence product safety (Xu
et al., 2020). A traceability system can convince consumers of their product’s
safety. Currently, the agri-products supply chain is not transparent for the
government and end-consumers. This was due to the limited shared in-
formation between parties in the supply chain. They resulted in end-consumer
relying heavily on retailers to expose product information. In comparing this
scenario, implementing a traceability system in the agri-products supply chain
allows stakeholders (farmers, distributors, retailers, government, etc.) to share
pre-determined information. Therefore, end-consumers can receive full details
on the processes the product has been through and who is responsible for it.
Traceability information can be tracked, coordinated, and collected from
business transactions and IoT-enabled devices such as Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) (Feng et al., 2020). However, Imeri and Khadraoiu (Imeri
and Khadraoui, 2018) argued that using the traceability information application
does not guarantee data security. Blockchain is believed to be able to build trust
mechanisms for transparency and security, as well as realize the exchange of
information values in the traceability management process (Demestichas et al.,
2020). The solutions offered by blockchain-based traceability can overcome the
shortcomings of centralized traceability solutions (Sunny et al., 2020).
According to Galvez, Mejuto, and Simal-Gandara (Galvez et al., 2018),
blockchain-based traceability can increase the need to trace products through
complex supply chains from retail back to their originating farmers, trace
outbreaks, verify that a product is halal, organic, or allergen-free or to ensure
transparency to consumers. When applied to the food supply chain, digital
product information such as farm origination details, batch number, factory
and processing data, expiration date, storage temperature, and shipping details
are digitally linked to the food item, and the information is entered into the
blockchain at every step of the process. Blockchain traceability can strengthen
trust and transparency. (Alamsyah et al., 2022b). study mentioned a similar
scheme in the halal supply chain, where blockchain-based traceability system
plays essential roles as halal assurance tools.
Previous research on blockchain-based traceability has proven very im-
portant in the agri-food supply chain (Feng et al., 2020; Demestichas et al.,
2020; Shew et al., 2022), transparency and accountability (Kshetri, 2017),
checking the feasibility of a vaccine in the Pharmaceutical supply chain
(Hasan et al., 2019), traceability and fraud prevention (Jin et al., 2017).
3. Research methodology
The research workflow is broken down into four stages: business process
understanding and data acquisition, model construction, application creation,
and system evaluation. In the first stage, the business process understanding is
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Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
conducted by interviewing several stakeholders in the coffee industry supply
chain, such as farmers, roasters, processors, manufacturers, retailers, and end
consumers. The interviews serve as a data collection step to support the model
construction effort. In the second stage, a blockchain-based supply chain
business process model is created as the foundation for implementation. This
model considered various important factors such as feature identification,
technical considerations, and governance. The model was divided into three
layers, with the first layer being the blockchain infrastructure, the second layer
being the application, and the third layer representing the actual supply chain
activities. In the third stage, an application is developed to allow each stake-
holder to record and view data. The final stage was the system evaluation. A
diagram of the research model is shown in Fig. 1.
The first stage involves the interview procedure with several coffee in-
dustry ecosystems, each with its own supply chain business practices. Most
ecosystems are led by processors and manufacturers. They can act from coffee
roasters to the packaging role in the coffee supply chain. The business idea is
usually born from the market demand, either from retailers or wholesalers such
as big supermarkets chain, restaurants or coffee shops, and exporters. Farmers'
lack of market knowledge triggered new services to act as intermediaries. We
identify some weaknesses in the current supply chain, farmers sell their pro-
ducts without systematic feedback and assurance monitoring from the fol-
lowing stakeholders and end-customers. Sustainability will become the pri-
mary concern if this routine continues to become the best practice.
The second stage is to design the framework of a blockchainable coffee
supply chain. Several aspects are worth considering when constructing the
general model of the coffee supply chain. Due to the different roles of sta-
keholders, we adjust the question to the respective stakeholders' knowledge.
The knowledge about blockchain features, different types of blockchain,
limitations, and challenges, regulation in the supply chain, worker or operator
digital literacy, security, and privacy concerns. Considering blockchain for the
supply chain is in the stage of early adoption or pioneering solution, we also
take the opportunity to verify the willingness of the stakeholders to adopt this
approach since there are risks mentioned above. It turns out that the inclination
towards transparency and traceability exceeds the potential risks. We divide
the second stage into 3 substages, they are:
1. Problem definition, and features capabilities identification:
The problem definition for transparency and traceability has become our
focus. However, many other blockchain features are worth considering to
complement the main objective. The questions surrounding this particular
emphasis include whether we need to use smart contract features, payment
capabilities, proof of ownership/delivery, enhanced data security, privacy,
etc.We combine the previous interview methodology and employ phe-
nomenological research design to investigate the rapid development of
blockchain technology. Many blockchain platforms offer specific solu-
tions. In general, the blooming innovation particularly concentrates on
solving issues such as low throughput and expensive transaction fees on
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
blockchain transactions.
2. Understand the blockchain technical considerations:
As a complex technology combining distributed processing and crypto-
graphy, we require sufficient knowledge of abstraction, functional features,
and implementation. We investigate the critical parts of the success of the
implementation and maintenance. Understanding the end-to-end solution,
customization, platform development, compatibility, and integration to the
current information flows become necessities. The de facto blockchain plat-
form for building decentralized applications is Ethereum. It became our pri-
mary reference to build applications thanks to the ability to execute programs
(smart contracts) on the blockchain. By putting programs or smart contracts on
the blockchain, we have the guarantee of code immutability and tamper-proof.
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a platform-level abstraction layer on
top of the Ethereum blockchain. Including EVM when choosing blockchain
platforms is essential because it reflects the reliability, scalability, and flex-
ibility of working on code across different platforms.
After considering many options to support traceability features, we com-
pare several blockchain platforms which become the candidates. The in-
formation source comes from literature reviews from academics' papers, case
studies, and white papers published by several competing blockchain plat-
forms. We chose several critical features for comparison; they are transaction
throughput, time, cost, EVM compatibility, and consensus mechanism. The
list is shown in Table 1. Transaction throughput is measured by transaction per
second (tps), finality time is measured by seconds or minutes, costs per op-
eration is measured by USD ($), EVM compatibility measure whether it is
compatible or not, or compatible via other mechanisms, and at last, all plat-
forms using Proof of Stake (POS) consensus mechanism that does not require
have computational power (low energy need).
3. Ensure the governance strategy supports the objective:
As a decentralized system, blockchain provides no central authority that
can control access or provide accountability. As a result, the governance
strategy must provide clear guidelines around who can write and access the
data and ensure that only authorized stakeholders have access to the system.
Proper governance and security are essential to protect the integrity of
blockchain records. Our principle is to guarantee data transparency based on
the right management of each stakeholder. In general, we allow everyone to
see the record or sequence of records that form the transparency of the coffee
supply chain information. However, we limit which stakeholders can add re-
cords to the blockchain. To capture the granularity while maintaining the in-
tegrity of information, the procedure allows only one person from each type of
stakeholder to submit the data.
The third step is to build the blockchain traceability prototype for later
verification and deployment by the coffee industry. The prototype will be the
modified version of the general coffee traceability model designed in the
second step. The modified version is a practical adaptation of the complete
model. The prototype will be based on the web or mobile application, where
stakeholders can add records to the process status (if permitted) and see the
whole records, hence the transparency of the entire supply chain. We imple-
ment the prototype in a case study on one of the coffee industries in Indonesia.
The fourth step is evaluating the system. The coffee traceability system
needs to meet certain criteria, which will serve as the foundation for its eva-
luation. The criteria are selected based on the literature review, and technical
aspects. The criteria are shown in Table 2, along with the description and how
Table 1
Blockchain Platform Comparison.
Ethereum Avalanche Polygon POS
Transaction Throughput 14 tps 4500 tps 7000 tps
Transaction Finality 6 min 2s 30 min
Transaction Costs > $1 < $1 < $1
EVM Compatible Yes Yes, with C- Chain Yes
Consensus Mechanism POS POS POS
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Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
to measure them.
4. Result and discussions
We categorize actors or stakeholders in the coffee industry supply chain
into 6 groups. They are farmers, processors, manufacturers, national govern-
ment agencies, markets/retailers/cafes, and the end consumer. Each stake-
holder has a specific role, either to write and read data or only to read the
information. There are 3 functions in the system; input data, which acts as
process information, transaction or process confirmation, and tracing in-
formation. The use case diagram of the stakeholders, system, and relationship
between them is shown in Fig. 2.
The design of traceability coffee consists of three layers of parallel pro-
cessing between stakeholders. The layers represent the actual activity between
stakeholders, the application process, and the blockchain records/views ac-
tivity. Each stakeholder submits the data and views the information via an
intermediary web/mobile application. The application writes and reads the
information to/from blockchain infrastructure. The design is shown in Fig. 3.
There are several defined stakeholders for the proposed design. The farmers,
who cultivate and take care of coffee plantations. The coffee processors are
responsible for further processing and customizing the green bean coffee into
the final product. The manufacturers become the primary stakeholders in
scaling up the production and packaging. The national government agency is
the regulatory body responsible for product certification. The market/retailer/
cafe is the general public buying the product in retail or wholesale fashion.
The end consumer is the body or individual who will extract the traceability
information of coffee products. The working details or records/view data could
be further explained as follows:
1. The farmers record farm data such as plant growth, used fertilizer, harvest
date, and other information.
2. The coffee processors record the coffee processing data such as processing
method, fermentation process, and other information.
3. The manufacturer records the manufacturer's information, including the
packaging.
4. The national government agency records certificate numbers and date-is-
sued data.
5. The market/retailer records the date of arrival in supply stock, product
type, and transaction number data.
6. The web/mobile application submitted the data to the blockchain from
each stakeholder type.
7. The end consumer views the traceability information via the web/mobile
application.
As the implementation of the general model in Figure 3, Figure 4 presents
a sequence data record of activities and type of data for each stakeholder role.
From stakeholder 1, we collect farmer data such as farm names, addresses,
GPS locations, coffee bean types of products, plantation information, and
transaction details such as payment invoices. The processor record farm data,
processor name, given batch number, coffee bean grade, processing methods,
and other transaction details. Manufacturer record manufacturer name, ad-
dress, given processing batch, processing details, coffee bean grades, packa-
ging volume, and given production code. The government agency responsible
for regulating the process records data such as production code, certification
number, manufacture name and location, certification date issued, coffee bean
grades, and certification agency name. Retailers' or wholesalers' stakeholders'
BSC Solana Polkadot Near
200 tps 40000 tps 1500 tps 1000 tps
75 s 5s 60 s 2s
< $1 < $1 < $1 < $1
Yes No No Yes, with Aurora
POS POS POS POS
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008

Table 2
System Evaluation Criteria.

Criteria Description Measurement

Immutable Records
Transparency
User Access Control
Interoperability
Scalability
Cost-effectiveness
User Adoption
Guarantee data records integrity.
Provide an open and auditable process.
Ensure the system has a secure and flexible user access
control mechanism.
Guarantee the system can be accessed by different devices.
Ability to handle large scale transaction
Assure the operational cost, such as transaction fees are
reasonable
Provide easiness for the user to access the system.
Compare data from the recording point with final information in traceability results.
Review the transparency of the supply chain stream.
Check whether the user has appropriate access to record data according to their respective role
in the supply chain location.
Check whether the user can read and write to the system by using different devices.
Measure how many transactions can be handled concurrently by the system.
Calculate the average cost of transaction.
Survey/Questionnaire about user experience in interacting with traceability system.

origin and related processed information. Some stakeholders are unavailable

Fig. 2. The use case diagram.
records data such as production code, certification number, retailers/whole-
salers/markets name, supply data, processing data, and purchase number order.
Finally, after aggregating all stakeholder's data, we can trace the information
through a mechanism such as a QR reader.
We apply the general design to one of Indonesia's coffee companies with a
unique main business to export green bean coffee to other countries. It is a
business-to-business (B2B) type of operation. The market requires that each
product is equipped with reliable and integrity information about the coffee's
or not yet established in the coffee industry's current supply chain practice;
those are manufacturers and national government agencies. Manufacturers
function as the stakeholders responsible for scalable production, mostly
overlapping with the coffee processor function, especially in our case study.
While the government agency that grants product certification has not yet been
established for a coffee product. Thus, by removing those two stakeholders in
total, we left with 4 stakeholders. The market/retail/coffee shop stakeholder is
considered similar to the end consumer well. In our case study, these stake-
holders are simplified by the exporter's role. Hence, we only need 3 stake-
holders for the case study: Farm, Processor, and Exporter.
We demonstrate how the general model can be implemented in our case
study, with only 3 stakeholders: Farm, Processors, and Exporter. The details
workflow is shown in Figure 5. The explanations are as follows:
In the first stakeholder (farm), we add a farm profile containing the farm
location, map link, geolocation, and elevation. Farm location is text-based data
representing the specific name of the coffee plantation location. Maps location
reveals google maps link of the location, while latitude and longitude co-
ordinates are numerical numbers of the location. The last important in-
formation for the farm profile is coffee plantation elevations, which are es-
sential for coffee quality. At elevations between 3000 and 6000 feet above sea
level in tropical areas, the air is cooler, and the temperature variations between
day and night are greater, which can result in a slower maturation of the coffee
cherries and a more flavorful cup of coffee. In addition, the soil at higher
elevations is often more nutrient-rich, which can also contribute to the quality
of the coffee. In the farm profile, one farm can choose many processors to
process their harvest further; thus, 1 farm > 1 processor.
The second stakeholder contains information about the processor profile. It
holds two important pieces of information; the processor name and the related
farm location of the first stakeholder. In the processor profile, one processor
can process many harvests from many farms: thus, 1 processor > 1 farm.

Fig. 3. The coffee traceability design.

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A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
Fig. 4. Data records workflow on each stakeholder's roles.
The last stakeholder is the exporter. The exporter acts to recapitulate all the
process information into condensed, traceable one for the next stakeholders.
Several stages have been conducted here; they are:
a. Add purchase order (PO), including purchase number and processor name.
b. Add stock keeping unit (SKU), which includes adding SKU unique index
number for the coffee green bean and SKU name.
c. Add green bean batch, which contains information about the harvesting
year, unique batch number, species classification, varieties, processed
name, and related SKU Green Bean (GB) number.
d. Add packaging containing information about SKU GB number and
packaging volume in kg.
e. Add shipping information, which refers to cost and freight document in-
formation, such as SKU information, packaging volume, shipping date,
country of origin, ICO certificate of origin, invoice and packaging list,
phytosanitary certificate, and bill of loading.
Additional information for the process includes the QR creation before and
after packaging, which we label as QR code 1 and QR code 2. QR code 1
focuses on the coffee processing information activity, while QR code 2 focuses
on shipping information. On the practical level, QR code 1 will be used by the
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Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
farmer as a consideration for getting micro-credit from banks or other financial
institutions. While QR code 2 is explicitly used by the exporter to trace the
green bean products.
Finally, we extend the conceptual design from the case study into a pro-
totype version. We use Polygon as the blockchain infrastructure. The polygon
blockchain has advantages in features such as Ethereum compatibility, high
scalability, low transaction fees, and ease of customizing for aspects of con-
sensus mechanism, block size, block time, and configurable smart contract.
While the application is developed using nextjs, a framework for React ap-
plications. Next.js is a JavaScript framework for building server-rendered or
statically exported applications. It is designed to make building web appli-
cations with React easier by providing a simple set of APIs for common tasks
such as server rendering, code splitting, and automatic code optimization. For
the database, we use MySQL database.
The most crucial step in developing a blockchain solution is designing the
smart contract to enable communication between the blockchain infrastructure
and the user interface. The user interface is the real-world situation (using
sensors or data collections procedure) and the web/mobile application. The
smart contract's primary function is to record the data and to read the in-
formation to/from blockchain infrastructure. The idea is as follows:
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
Fig. 5. Data records workflow on our case study.
1. Maintain a mapping between a unique product id and its current supply
chain location.
2. Update product location and retrieve current product location.
3. Have an event to emit whenever the product location is updated.
We design the smart contract pseudocode, which describes the plan of the
final smart contract program for traceability. First, we map a coffee product to
a unique productID. Second, we collect location information, in this context, is
the stakeholder's location. Third, if the productID moves to a new location, we
construct a routine called UpdateLocationID. Fourth, we build a routine called
CurrentLocationID to emit information about the product's current location.
Finally, we collect all the locations the product has passed, and we call this
routine TraceProductID. The pseudocode is in Figure 6.
The prototype has been rigorously tested and scrutinized for performance
in the coffee exporter, as mentioned in our case study. The prototype only
records the process from the farmer to the shipping information. Overall, the
industry is delighted to have traceability information regarding shipping in-
formation. The subsequent prototype development will be added more record
data, thence the end consumer (in other countries) can enjoy the complete
information from the farmer, processor, expedition/shipping, retails/cafe, and
finally, on their hands. We show the application interface for the farmer and
processor in Figure 7, while the traceability information of QR Code 1 and QR
Code 2 is shown in Figure 8, respectively.
As for system evaluation, we report each criterion mentioned in Table 2 as
follows. The immutable records are measured by collecting random sampling
data from several stakeholders' nodes and checking if there has been any al-
teration in traceability information. From 100 data collection, we have zero
alteration, which means the immutable records have been excellently fulfilled by
the system, grace to the blockchain mechanism. Transparency criteria are
measured by verifying if the supply chain stream is observable at any point of
the process. We verify this by randomly selecting 50 supply chain streams and
verifying that the flow of information can be traced from any node in the supply
chain network. User access control criteria have been achieved by testing sev-
eral user roles. As the application interface is tightly connected to the user's
wallet, it restricts the user's ability to write records on other nodes. The testing
result shows each user can only access according to their respective stakeholder
roles in the supply chain. The interoperability criteria are assessed by accessing
7
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
the system through various devices. Since the application is web-based, it can be
accessed from common platforms such as Windows, macOS, Linux, IOS, and
Android. The scalability criteria are evaluated by measuring the reduction of
system performance as the process grows larger, such as increasing parallel
record writing and reading. At present, our system has only received around
10–20 parallel processes per second. However, the polygon blockchain that we
use has the potential to process up to 65000 transactions per second (tps). Cost-
effectiveness criteria are evaluated by computing the total cost of each supply
chain streamline in generating traceability. It includes the cost of writing the
information and executing the process. Although the transaction fee can vary
depending on the network condition, at the time of testing, polygon transaction
fee range between $0.0005 to $0.2. With an average of 10 processes on each
streamline, the cost would be a maximum of $2, making it the most affordable
option among other blockchain platform alternatives. User adoption criteria are
evaluated by collecting the stakeholder opinion regarding the usability of the
system through the questionnaire. Around 75% of the stakeholders reported that
the system is easy to use but requires a better user interface to enhance the
experience and increase adoption.
5. Conclusions and future works
We successfully designed the traceability model for the coffee industry
supply chain using blockchain technology. Our design is a general model that
can modularly be applied to specific coffee industry supply chain conditions.
We demonstrated how to apply the model to a particular industry by reducing
Fig. 6. Smart contract traceability pseudocode.
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
Fig. 7. The application user interface for farm and processor data record.
Fig. 8. The traceability information of (a). QR Code 1 and (b) QR Code 2.
the number of stakeholders of the general model to suit distinct conditions. We
also develop a prototype application that has been rigorously tested on a
supply chain environment in our case study industry. Overall, we hope this
study can enrich the literature and practical aspect of blockchain applications,
especially in the coffee industry.
For future work, we plan to enhance the prototype version for the end
consumers. The system will record the supply chain activities from the farmers
to the end consumers. Some challenges might occur, such as automated data
collection, once the coffee package arrives at the retailers. However, we could
extract transaction information or use the image/video recognition based on
internet of things (IoT) sensors and Artificial Intelligence algorithms.
Funding
This research was funded by the Kedaireka Program from the Ministry of
Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, Republik Indonesia, and The
APC were funded by Telkom University.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Conceptualization, A.A., S.W., and E.N.; methodology, A.A. and S.W.;
software, E.N., and M.N.H.; validation, D.R., A.S.D., and D.P.R.; formal
analysis, A.A.; investigation, S.W., and E.N.; resources, S.W.; data curation,
M.N.H., and P.T.; writing—original draft preparation, A.A., S.W., P.W., and
8
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market,and Complexity 9 (2023) 100008
P.T.; writing—review and editing, A.A. and M.N.H.; visualization, P.T.; su-
pervision, D.R.; project administration, E.N., A.S.D., and D.P.R.; funding
acquisition, A.A. and S.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published
version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement
Not applicable.
Informed consent statement
Not applicable.
Data availability statement
This research uses secondary data from various sources, submitted to
quantitative data analysis methods. See Section 3: Research Methodology, for
details.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships
which may be considered as potential competing interests: Andry Alamsyah
reports financial support was provided by Ministry of Education, Culture,
A. Alamsyah, S. Widiyanesti, P. Wulansari et al.
Research, and Technology, Republik Indonesia.
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