Applications of Secured Blockchain Technology in the Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

The manufacturing industry inclines to worldwide business operations due to the economic advantage of product design and development. In this way, globalized manufacturing supply chains make their management and control more difficult. As a distributed ledger technology that ensures transparency, trust, traceability, and cybersecurity, blockchain technology promises to ease some global manufacturing operation problems. This chapter presents blockchain technology basics and analyses the issues (e.g., traceability, cybersecurity, flexibility, and smart contracts) related to the blockchain-based manufacturing information system. Next, the chapter presents related research work in the manufacturing industry in recent years. It also includes a classification mechanism for manufacturing information systems based on specific properties. It is followed by discussing the critical issues that need to consider in designing industry-specific reference information system architecture. Finally, the chapter discusses the scope of future research.