TMW Systems Reveals Plans for Blockchain System
This graphic shows how a blockchain logistics chain develops as new conditions and terms of the contract are added during a shipment. Graphic: TMW Systems
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This graphic shows how a blockchain logistics chain develops as new conditions and terms of the contract are added during a shipment. Graphic: TMW Systems
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Trucking technology innovator TMW Systems announced that it is developing its own blockchain software system with an eye toward launching it next year.
The announcement came last week during an online presentation featuring Timothy Leonard, executive vice president of TMW Systems, outlining blockchain technology for trucking journalists and explaining the potential for this new technology to create completely transparent logistics agreements based on real-time data and encrypted, two-party agreements.
Other logistic companies today, UPS and Walmart, to name a couple, use proprietary blockchain systems to power their logistics networks. Leonard says TMW’s system, which has been in development for about 9 months now, will feature both private, encrypted, systems designed to connect shippers and carriers that subscribe to the new service. But in addition, Leonard says, the TWM system will be designed to connect with outside blockchain and vehicle communications and telematics systems, in order to create a virtual matrix of logistics agreements and information – much of which will be accessible to nonsubscribers, as a means of exponentially empowering connected programs and networks to facilitate and expedite logistics worldwide.
Leonard noted during the presentation that considerable confusion surrounds the blockchain concept, which is often associated with online, electronic currency systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. But, in reality, he explained, blockchain is a modern, internet-based ledger system – similar to a transaction-focused database, that connects interested parties and enables secure transactions in an open system that is not owned or controlled by any single party.
Leonard says he views TMW as more of a “host,” of the blockchain system currently under development and would only track the progress of the contract as a new logistics transaction is created and takes …Read the rest of this story
