The emergence of new digital industrial technology, known as Industry 4.0, has a positive impact on the performance of the supply chain. Warehouses are a basic part of the supply chain; they are used to store products and manage the inventory level. A sound warehouse management system can lead to cost reduction and also can improve customer satisfaction. Traditional warehouse management models have become less efficient and unsuitable for today’s increasing market requirements. For the past decades, information and communication technology has been used for warehouse management. This paper presents a new approach for warehouse management by utilizing one of the main pillars of Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things. This new technology enables the connection of several objects through collecting real-time data and sharing them; the resulting information can then be used to support automated decision-making. The architecture of this application is illustrated and its potential benefits are overviewed. A framework is proposed to implement this approach in warehousing management, which can help in providing real-time visibility of everything in the warehouse, increasing speed and efficiency, and preventing inventory shortage and counterfeiting. This proposal gives an effective roadmap for enterprises to improve their warehouses by using the Internet of Things.

Purpose: Smart contracts are self-executing computer programmes that have the potential to be used in several applications instead of traditional written contracts. With the recent rise of smart systems (e.g. Internet of things) and digital platforms (e.g. blockchain), smart contracts are gaining high interest in both business and academia. In this work, a framework for smart contracts was proposed with using reputation as the system currency, and conducts currency mining through fulfilling the physical commitments that are agreed upon.Design/methodology/approach: A game theory model is developed to represent the proposed system, and then a system dynamics simulator is used to check the response of the blockchain with different sizes.Findings: The numerical results showed that the proposed system could identify the takeover attacks and protect the blockchain from being controlled by an outsider. Another important finding is that careful setting of the maximum currency amount can improve the scalability of the blockchain and prevent the currency inflation.Research limitations/implications: This work is proposed as a conceptual framework for supply chain 4.0. Future work will be dedicated to implement and experiment the proposed framework for other characteristics that may be encountered in the context of supply chain 4.0, such as different suppliers' tiers, different customer typologies and smart logistics applications, which may reveal other challenges and provide additional interesting insights.Practical implications: By using the proposed framework, smart contracts and blockchains can be implemented to handle many issues in the context of operations and supply chain 4.0, especially in times of turbulence such as the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis.Originality/value: This work emphasizes that smart contracts are not too smart to be applied in the context of supply chain 4.0. The proposed framework of smart contracts is expected to serve supply chain 4.0 by automating the knowledge work and enabling scenario planning through the game theory model. It will also improve online transparency and order processing in real-time through secured multitier connectivity. This can be applied in global supply chain functions backed with digitization, notably during the time of the pandemic, in which e-commerce and online shopping have changed the rules of the game.

The tourism industry is currently facing many challenges; one of the main challenges is the lack of having smart tourism systems that make use of the recent advances in information and communication technology. Another challenge is designing such smart tourism systems while embracing diversified tourists’ sustainable values of experience (functional values, social values, emotional values, and epistemic values). In light of these challenges, the overall objective of this work is to design a smart tourism experience-centered system that considers social and technical perspectives. The Socio-Technical Systems theory was adopted as a theoretical foundation, and the Design Science Research methodology was used to develop a smart tourism system and a practical design artifact. A case study from the Japanese tourism context was studied by exploring tourists’ sustainable values of experiences and local staffs’ behaviors. The main problem was the dysfunctional communication between local service staffs and foreign tourists during the service process. After identifying the problem and the objectives, a relevant smart tourism system was synthesized and tested as a design artifact. The results of the utility test of the proposed artifact showed its effectiveness and efficiency in facilitating the service process and in creating multi-dimensional values of experience.