Benefit and Cost Analysis of Blockchain Technology in the Supply Chain and Monitoring in the Automotive Industry

Blockchain technology is an easily accessible distributed data management system in which blocks linked in a chain that keep tamper-proof transaction records. Unlike other databases, it includes different technological systems such as peer to peer network, distributed ledger, cryptography, consensus mechanism and smart contract. While blockchain brings visibility, security, trust environment and transparency to the supply chain of companies to ensure sustainability, on the other hand, blockchain innovations come together with emergent technologies to provide scalable data management, decentralized networking, automation, predictive performance, real-time traceability that significantly affect productivity and profitability. While this study addresses about the shortcomings of the existing supply chain and improvements coming from blockchain technology to the supply chain, it also focuses on the structure of blockchain technology, how it works, where it is used and future predictions of it. The importance of the collaboration among artificial intelligence, internet of things and blockchain technologies for a fully automated and flawless supply chain are indicated. Additionally, the study discusses the use cases of blockchain technology in the automotive industry to enlighten the companies by giving information about relationship between the automotive supply chain and blockchain technology, and it mentions that how it is used by the companies in the industry to understand market situations. The main purpose of this dissertation is to determine the general financial parameters of the investment to be made by the automotive companies that want to adapt blockchain technology to their supply chain and to make a benefit-cost calculation. Firms in the different sectors can customize the given parameters according to the use case of blockchain technology and utilize some of them as the basis for their calculation. In addition, the study gives advice to companies for project management of the investment and shows how the blockchain will affect the automotive industry strategically. Keywords: Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Supply Chain, Automotive Industry, Financial Analysis, Strategy, Project Management