Progressively, Software development organizations are investing their resources, time and, money on Software Process Improvement (SPI) since it is beneficial in the enhancement of product quality, reduction in development time, and cost of software projects. However, the existing methodologies and approaches are time-consuming and costly and their major focus is on the SPI of Large Scale Enterprises (LSEs) therefore, we are introducing blockchain in SPI to overcome its major issues such as reliance on a central body of standardization for certification, knowledge management, high cost, resource management and change in organizational culture, etc. We have performed an exploratory case study to identify the different barriers of traditional SPI approaches. To overcome the identified issues, we have proposed and implemented a new approach by performing two case studies. The first case study was performed to identify the barriers in traditional SPI approaches and the second case study was performed to validate our proposed approach. We have performed our experiments on 55 representatives of 50 organizations. According to the results of proposed approach 56.4% of the population agreed that the SPI cost will decrease, 61.8% agreed that time of SPI will decrease and 60.3% of the population agreed that BBSPI will decrease resource utilization. Moreover, 69.1% of the population agreed with the fact that proposed BBSPI will make effective knowledge management and 83.3% of the population said that an organization can mature its processes equaliant to the central certification (CMMI, ISO) body by employing proposed BBSPI. Our results affirm that the BBSPI can reduce the time, cost, resources and helps to manage knowledge used to perform SPI. Moreover, results also depict that the BBSPI can be an efficient substitute of central bodies that could help small and medium-sized organizations to conform to common process improvement models by spending less money, time, and resources with effective knowledge management.
Erkan YALÇINKAYA, Antonio Maffei, Hakan Akillioglu, Mauro Onori
Technological advancements in the information technology domain such as cloud computing, industrial internet of things (IIoT), machine to machine (M2M) communication, artificial intelligence (AI), etc. have started to profoundly impact and challenge not only the ISA95 compliant traditional (ISA95-CTS) but also the smart manufacturing systems (SMMS). Our literature survey pinpoints that systems scalability, interoperability, information security, and data quality domains are among those where many challenges occur. Blockchain technology (BCT) is a new breed of technology characterized by decentralized verifiability, transparency, data privacy, integrity, high availability, and data protection properties. Although many researchers leveraged BCT to empower various aspects of industrial manufacturing systems, there is no study dedicated to addressing the challenges impacting the manufacturing systems compliant with the ISA95 standard. Thereby, our study aims to fill the identified research gap systematically. This paper thoroughly analyzes the challenges hampering the ISA95-CTS and SMMS and methodically addresses them with corresponding BCT capabilities. Furthermore, this paper also discusses various aspects, including the weaknesses, of BCT convergence to ISA95-CTS and SMMS.
Alexios Papacharalampopoulos, Harry Bikas, Christos K. Michail, Panagiotis Stavropoulos
Manufacturing process related functionalities, like optimization and control, are in general demanding in terms of data, computational time and efficiency. However, there are no generic certification or validation schemes that can be followed. In particular, only ISO application can verify the suitability of operations up to an extent. The current work utilizes an enhanced version of Blockchain so that functionalities at the process level can be certified as per a particular scheme. The concept of ledger is elaborated to this end, to manipulate knowledge and be able to handle it like an asset that is exchanged. Thus, a specific generic framework is proposed, herein, to reassure that the right kind of information has been exchanged during process control and optimization. Furthermore, expert distributed agents are utilized to turn knowledge into certified procedures. Encryption issues are also regarded, providing safety and security as extra characteristics. The case study of thermal process control is regarded in this sense to prove the complementary character of these concepts and the usability of the framework. Finally, the existence of additional features within this loop is discussed, like the validation of quantifying concepts like resource streams.
Open access
Flexible and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems
Digital Transformation in Industry
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Global supply chains shift to meet exceeding expectations in supply chains lead to the need for digital technologies in supply chain management. Industry 4.0 has emerged in sustainable supply chain systems, blockchain is prominent, with the potential of immutable transparent data. Blockchains present potential to disrupt supply chains through digital transformation by enabling provenance, visibility, relationships, collaboration, lower costs, and enabling real-time trusted data. Scholars are increasingly investigating blockchain adoption, with an emphasis on technology acceptance modelling. Current research is valuable to understand potentials of blockchain technology in supply chains however, there is limited work on the building blocks for blockchain adoption in digital transformation of supply chains. This study aims to investigate through a systematic literature review and case studies, the building blocks for blockchain adoption in digital transformation of sustainable supply chains. Blockchain adoption in supply chain management is receiving increasing attention, along with highlights of critical factors. This paper offers a building block model that is in three main phases; pre-adoption, adoption, and the post adoption. The model indicates that adoption context, blockchain technology platform offerings, strategic responses, and adoption readiness are some key building blocks, particularly at the pre-adoption phase. Trust and supply chain network, firm resources, and blockchain costs are all considered critical in the considerations of the building blocks. In addition, aligning supply chain objectives with blockchain systems is critical and so is blockchain compatibility. Law and governance are amongst the two prominent challenges in blockchain adoption and should be considered as part of the building blocks for blockchain adoption.
The construction industry lacks a comprehensive and overall scheme for the use and management of building information modeling (BIM) in the whole building life cycle, especially the use of BIM technology for asset management and facility management. However, there is little understanding and implementation of enterprise BIM. BIM influences and changes the new project management mode of the whole life cycle of construction projects from design to construction. The safety, audit, responsibility and value of BIM are the forward-looking problems in current BIM, but it is difficult to realize the whole process value management based on the contribution of all parties, it is not conducive to the popularization and application of BIM. From the perspective of new technology and the whole life cycle, this paper analyzes the development and promotion of Blockchain technology to construction projects, and puts forward the fusion point of BIM and Blockchain technology: multi-user, multi-stage, multi-target data fusion and traceability mechanism; It is a consensus process model of multi-party collaboration, interest balance, non-destructive transmission of building information, responsibility traceability and customer satisfaction. It realizes the supporting framework and implementation ideas of BIM and Blockchain technology in construction projects from the aspects of design technology, construction management, material scheduling and whole life cycle construction. This paper will provide some new ideas for the whole life cycle collaborative management of digital construction.
Pratyush Kumar Patro, Raja Wasim Ahmad, Ibrar Yaqoob, Khaled Salah · 5 authors
Product recall management in the automotive industry is a challenging problem that affects human lives and the safe operation of automobiles. Product recalls can assist in removing potentially unsafe products from the marketplace and minimizing a company’s responsibility for corporate negligence. Today’s systems and technologies leveraged for product recall management in the automotive supply chain fall short in providing transparency, traceability, reliability, audit, security, and trust features. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based approach to overcome the aforementioned problems related to product recall management. We employ the public Ethereum blockchain and integrate it with the decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to deal with the large-sized data problem. We present the system design and six algorithms explaining the working principles, information exchange flow, and stakeholders’ detail and their sequential interactions. We discuss the implementation details, generalization aspects, and cost and security analyses to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The proposed solution is cost-effective, secure, and enables automakers to have end-to-end visibility of information during product recalls. We make the smart contracts’ code publicly available on GitHub.
Walaa AlKhader, Khaled Salah, Andrei Sleptchenko, Raja Jayaraman · 6 authors
Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has disclosed the deficiencies and limitations of the existing manufacturing and supply chain systems used for medical devices and supplies. It enforces the necessity to accelerate the shift towards decentralized digital manufacturing and supply chain networks. This paper proposes a blockchain-based solution for decentralized digital manufacturing of medical devices and their supply. We develop Ethereum smart contracts to govern and track transactions in a decentralized, transparent, traceable, auditable, trustworthy, and secure manner. This allows overcoming certain issues hindering the transition towards decentralized digital manufacturing and supply, including trusted traceability, attestations, certifications, and secured intellectual property (IP) rights. We incorporate the decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS) into the Ethereum blockchain to store and fetch Internet of things (IoT)-based devices records and additional manufacturing and supply details. We present the system architecture and algorithms along with their full implementation and testing details. Furthermore, we present cost and security analyses to show that the proposed solution is cost-efficient and resilient against well-known vulnerabilities and security attacks. We make our smart contracts code publicly available on GitHub.
Luis A. Estrada-Jimenez, Terrin Pulikottil, Ricardo Silva Peres, Sanaz Nikghadam-Hojjati · 5 authors
The heterogeneity of the components of a Cyber-Physical Production System in addition to the high decentralization and autonomy required in Industry 4.0, introduces new levels of engineering complexity and dynamism that classical reductionists approaches are not able to solve. Within this context, novel solutions that rely on complexity sciences seem to be a good alternative to cope with these underline challenges. In this context, this paper presents a conceptual framework of complexity theory, self-organization and emergence and its subsequent relation to cyber manufacturing systems. Such analysis shows very promising ideas in the further development of complex, robust, adaptive and at least partial autonomous manufacturing systems.
Johannes Mayer, Philipp Niemietz, Daniel Trauth, Thomas Bergs
The vision of the Paris Climate Convention is global greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050. Manufacturing industry accounts for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas. The achievement of emission targets requires joint implementation and the participation of the employee. An incentive concept based on a Distributed Ledger Technology allows the automatically reward of climate protection measures based on tamper-proof stored Key Performance Indicators. The technology also enables the automated payment of a CO2-tax proportional to energy consumption. A technology recommendation for the incentive concept based on an analysis of the technological requirements for a distributed ledger completes the paper.
Johannes Mayer, Philipp Niemietz, Daniel Trauth, Thomas Bergs
Industry 4.0 is characterized by the transformation and networking of production systems as a result of utilizing digital technologies and processing huge amounts of data. The features of Distributed Ledger Technologies have the potential to revolutionize production by creating trust and transparency in stored data, eliminating dependence on single entities and performing automated transactions in real time. Due to the disruptive change coming with an implementation, manufacturers remain skeptical about the technology. To raise awareness of the potential of Distributed Ledger Technology, this paper describes valid use cases and examines the interactions with business models in real world manufacturing scenarios.
The number of security incidents related to the manufacturing industry has been steadily increasing over the past decade. The most prominent security risks impacting the manufacturing industry are intellectual property theft, supply chain interruptions, industrial espionage, data breaches, and ransomware attacks. Blockchain is an emerging technology that offers distributed, highly available, resilient, and traceable ledger-based databases and thus opens new ways of dealing with conventional security challenges in the confidentiality, integrity, and availability domains. ISA95 outlines manufacturing functions in a number of areas and characterizes the information flows. Moreover, ISA95 constitutes a common blueprint for the manufacturing industry and this research paper systematically assesses the suitability of the blockchain technology for the ISA95 enterprise core functions and sub-functions as a way to ultimately increase the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of manufacturing systems.
Juri Mattila, Timo Seppälä, Pellervo Valkama, Taneli Hukkinen · 6 authors
Collecting and utilizing product life-cycle data is both difficult and expensive for products that move between different industrial settings at various points of the product life-cycle. Product-centric approaches that present effective solutions in tightly integrated environments have been problematic to deploy across multiple industries and over longer timespans. Addressing deployment costs, incentives, and governance, this paper explores a blockchain-based approach for the deployment of product-centric information systems. Through explorative design science and systematic combining, the deployment of a permissionless blockchain system for collecting product life-cycle data is conceptualized, demonstrated, and evaluated by experts. The purpose of the blockchain-based solution is to manage product data interactions, to maintain an accurate single state of product information, and to provide an economic incentive structure for the provision and the deployment of the solution. The evaluation by knowledgeable researchers and practitioners identifies the aspects limiting blockchain-based deployment of solutions in the current industrial landscape. Combining theory and practice, the paper lays the foundation for a blockchain-based approach to product information management, placing design priority on inter-industrial and self-sustained deployment.
Arghavan Akbarieh, William Carbone, Markus Schäfer, Danièle Waldmann · 5 authors
Despite the enormous amount of raw or secondary materials flowing within the construction industry, the actual available volume of materials and their respective End-of-Lifecycle (EoL) treatment is not regulated nor uniform. On top of that, the EoL responsibility of different stakeholders after the future building deconstruction is confusing and disputable. Consequently, different sustainability policies and […]
Jens Ducrée, Max Gravitt, Ray Walshe, Sönke Bartling · 6 authors
We outline the concept of an open technology platform which builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes and experimental characterisation, as well as virtualisation by a ‘digital twin”. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology “Blockchain”, we significantly extend traditional approaches to effectively incentivise broader participation by an interdisciplinary ‘value network’ of diverse players. Ranging from skilled individuals and more established research institutions to companies with their infrastructures, equipment and services, the novel platform approach enables all stakeholders to jointly contribute to value creation along more decentralised supply chain designs. Blockchain-enabled “Wisdom of the Crowds” and “Skin in the game” mechanisms secure “trust” and transparency between participants. Prediction markets are created for guiding decision making, planning and allocation of funding; competitive parallelisation of work and its validation from independent participants substantially enhances quality, credibility and speed of project outcomes along the entire path from RTD, fabrication and testing to eventual commercialisation. This novel, Blockchain-backed concept can be led by a corporation, academic entity, a loosely organised group, or even a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). The proposed strategy is particularly attractive for highly interdisciplinary fields like Lab-on-a-Chip systems in the context of manifold applications in the Life Sciences. Rather than engaging in all sub-disciplines themselves, many smaller, highly innovative actors can focus on strengthening the product component distinguishing their unique selling point (USP). In this effort, system integrators access underlying commons like fluidic design, manufacture, instrumentation and software from a more resilient and diversified supply chain.
The next-generation technologies enabled by the industry 4.0 revolution put immense pressure on traditional ISA95 compliant manufacturing systems to evolve into smart manufacturing systems. Unfortunately, the transformation of old to new manufacturing technologies is a slow process. Therefore, the manufacturing industry is currently in a situation that the legacy and modern manufacturing systems share the same factory environment. This heterogeneous ecosystem leads to challenges in systems scalability, interoperability, information security, and data quality domains. Our former research effort concluded that blockchain technology has promising features to address these challenges. Moreover, our systematic assessment revealed that most of the ISA95 enterprise functions are suitable for applying blockchain technology. However, no blockchain reference architecture explicitly focuses on the ISA95 compliant traditional and smart manufacturing systems available in the literature. This research aims to fill the gap by first methodically specifying the design requirements and then meticulously elaborating on how the reference architecture components fulfill the design requirements.
Supply chain 4.0 denotes the fourth revolution of supply chain management systems, integrating manufacturing operations with telecommunication and Information Technology processes. Although the overarching aim of supply chain 4.0 is the enhancement of production systems within supply chains, making use of global reach, increasing agility and emerging technology, with the ultimate goal of increasing efficiency, timeliness and profitability, Supply chain 4.0 suffers from unique and emerging operational and cyber risks. Supply chain 4.0 has a lack of semantic standards, poor interoperability, and a dearth of security in the operation of its manufacturing and Information Technology processes. The technologies that underpin supply chain 4.0 include blockchain, smart contracts, applications of Artificial Intelligence, cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things and Industrial Internet of Things. Each of these technologies, individually and combined, create cyber security issues that should be addressed. This paper explains the nature of the military supply chains 4.0 and how it uniquely differs from the commercial supply chain, revealing their strengths, weaknesses, dependencies and the fundamental technologies upon which they are built. This encompasses an assessment of the cyber risks and opportunities for research in the field, including consideration of connectivity, sensing and convergence of systems. Current and emerging semantic models related to the standardization, development and safety assurance considerations for implementing new technologies into military supply chains 4.0 are also discussed. This is examined from a holistic standpoint and through technology-specific lenses to determine current states and implications for future research directions.
A systematic review of the literature is presented related to the usage of blockchain technology (BCT) for cyber-threats in the context of Industry 4.0. BCT plays a crucial role in creating smart factories and it is recognized as a core technology that triggers a disruptive revolution in Industry 4.0. Beyond security, authentication, asset tracking and the exchange of smart contracts, BCTs allow terminals to exchange information according to mutually agreed rules within a secured manner. Consequently, BCT can play a crucial role in industrial sustainability by preserving the assets and the environment and by enhancing the quality of life of citizens. In this work, a classification of the most important cyber-attacks that occurred in the last decade in Industry 4.0 is proposed based on four classes. The latter classes cover scanning, local to remote, power of root and denial of service (DoS). BCT is also defined and various types belong to BCT are introduced and highlighted. Likewise, BCT protocols and implementations are discussed as well. BCT implementation includes linear structure and directed acyclic graph (DAG) technology. Then, a comparative study of the most relevant works based on BCT in Industry 4.0 is conducted in terms of confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy and multifactor authentication features. Our review shows that the integration of BCT in industry can ensure data confidentiality and integrity and should be enforced to preserve data availability and privacy. Future research directions towards enforcing BCT in the industrial field by considering machine learning, 5G/6G mobile systems and new emergent technologies are presented.
Demetrios Joannou, Roy Kalawsky, Miguel Martínez-García, Chris Fowler · 5 authors
A key requirement for an integrated digital tool chain is secure access and control of data assets. Not all stakeholders will have the same access to or control over the flow of information, some will be able to input or change data whilst others will only be able to read the data. Simply providing secure access protocols is not sufficient because copied data can quickly become disassociated and modified from its original instantiation, leading to its reuse elsewhere or later in the lifecycle but in an inappropriate way. Therefore, data management mechanisms are required that capture information about the data along with any decisions or modifications it has undergone during the course of its life, thus providing complete traceability for later validation purposes. This undertaking is essential across the systems engineering lifecycle. This pursuit involves controlling who can access and modify data within the lifecycle. This paper describes a solution to this by the introduction of blockchain technology, a relatively new technology that allows digital information to be distributed but not copied, making it an immutable set of time-stamped data managed by a network of connected systems and services. Though blockchain technology is not commonly referred to when discussing Industry 4.0, the technology’s capabilities should add value when applied in a context of data management and security within the lifecycle of a product or services and in conjunction with digital twins, big data, and IoT. This paper describes how permissioned blockchains can be implemented within a systems engineering lifecycle, providing example architecture patterns showing how data provenance can be maintained throughout.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Digital Transformation in Industry
Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations
Sabah Suhail, Rasheed Hussain, Raja Jurdak, Choong Seon Hong
Industrial processes rely on sensory data for critical decision-making processes. Extracting actionable insights from the collected data calls for an infrastructure that can ensure the trustworthiness of data. To this end, we envision a blockchain-based framework for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to address the issues of data management and security. Once the data collected from trustworthy sources are recorded in the blockchain, product lifecycle events can be fed into data-driven systems for process monitoring, diagnostics, and optimized control. In this regard, we leverage digital twins (DTs) that can draw intelligent conclusions from the data by identifying the faults and recommending precautionary measures ahead of critical events. Furthermore, we discuss the integration of DTs and blockchain to target key challenges of disparate data repositories, untrustworthy data dissemination, and fault diagnosis. Finally, we identify outstanding challenges faced by the IIoT and future research directions while leveraging blockchain and DTs.
Jinying Li, Ananda Maiti, Matthew Springer, Tony Gray
In global Supply Chain Quality Management (SCQM), there are methods to ensure continuity of supply, at appropriate prices while meeting quality standards. But they are limited by the large and fallible role of humans, especially in manufacturing and quality control. Open Manufacturing aims to establish an open network of manufacturers that enables product information sharing among others in the production chain. Realizing the goals of open manufacturing requires processing the large datasets inherent to the production chain partners. But it is difficult to comply with the trust and privacy requirements of the suppliers in a supply chain. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of blockchain and its current and potential use in the industrial context including Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-based sensor networks, and the impact of the blockchain technology in manufacturing related areas such as traceability. The focus of this paper is on a potential application of blockchain in SCQM with detailed analysis of its technical feasibility and the methods of transitioning between the current approaches to a blockchain-oriented platform. An innovative use of blockchain to store referral information is also discussed. The survey concludes that blockchain along with IIoT can improve SCQM in an Open Manufacturing model.
Aamir Iqbal, Mohammad Amir, Vinod Kumar, Aftab Alam · 5 authors
In modern era, a wide range of smart industries is being focus on automation-based applications. Various technologies are rapidly implementing in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for manufacturing sectors that helping to achieve advanced schedule production framework and on time delivery of products. The integration of IIoT platforms with the blockchain are challenging service in manufacturing system. The primary objective of this article is to characterize various issues and challenges that are implementing IIoT and blockchain in industries. The proposed work is an integration of IIoT and blockchain in industrial processes for solving the security issues in real-time. Also, identifying various enablers of blockchain and issues of IIoT from smart industries manufacturing using a survey tool is formed in the form of questionnaire. Based on these responses Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique has been implemented for categorizing these challenges into cause and effect. In this paper, we introduce the general layout with their key issues and challenges of IIoT and blockchain that signifies the safety requirements to design the IIoT and blockchain. Further, we describe how IIoT can be integrated to the blockchain for smart Industrial applications. Finally, various recommendations are the proposed to upcoming IIoT and blockchain developments. The proposed work will be highly beneficial for the smart industries to develop a next generation IIoT and blockchain based framework.
Nikola Todorović, Marko Vještica, Vladimir Dimitrieski, Miroslav Zarić · 6 authors
In recent years, Industry 4.0 has promoted the enhanced horizontal integration of value chain participants, aiming to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Cross-Organizational Business Processes. In this paper, we discuss transparency and data privacy challenges that occur with the introduction of a high level of horizontal integration. Private, permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology systems and smart contracts can be used to address these challenges and enhance the integration of business processes across the entire value chain. To make this possible, we propose a creation of a Model-Driven Software Development approach based on a Domain-Specific Modeling Language that would enable automatic generation of smart contracts. Generated smart contracts could then be used by collaborating parties to supervise the state of production and contract fulfillment in a trustworthy and secure way.