In smart-logistics ecological chains led by e-commerce platforms, the organisational efficiency has become an important indicator to measure the ecological chain’s development. However, no scientific theoretical framework exists regarding the factors affecting such organisational efficiency. This paper adopts a multi-case study method to research four e-commerce platforms in China and investigate the current situation and development of smart-logistics ecological chains. Through interviews and analysis, the research proposes a theoretical framework of factors influencing the organisational efficiency about smart-logistics ecological chains led by an e-commerce platform. First, it reveals that under e-commerce platform leadership, the smart-logistics ecological chain’s organisational efficiency directly relates to two factors: the eco-chain’s technological innovation capability and contract fulfilment. Second, national policies, consumer demands, the competition among ecological chains, and Information-sharing will indirectly affect the smart-logistics ecological chain’s organisational efficiency. Third, enhancing the smart-logistics ecological chain’s technological innovation capability positively impacts its contract fulfilment.
Contemporary 300mm semiconductor manufacturing systems have highly automated and digitalized cyber-physical integration. They suffer from the profound problems of integrating large, centralized legacy systems with small islands of automation. With the recent advances in disruptive technologies, semiconductor manufacturing has faced dramatic pressures to reengineer its automation and computer integrated systems. This paper proposes a Distributed-Ledger, Edge-Computing Architecture (DLECA) for automation and computer integration in semiconductor manufacturing. Based on distributed ledger and edge computing technologies, DLECA establishes a decentralized software framework where manufacturing data are stored in distributed ledgers and processed locally by executing smart contracts at the edge nodes. We adopt an important topic of automation and computer integration for semiconductor research &development (R&D) operations as the study vehicle to illustrate the operational structure and functionality, applications, and feasibility of the proposed DLECA software framework.
Supply chain literature has long recognized the benefits of information sharing. Researchers and practitioners see high potential for improving processes, enabling new replenishment policies, and enhancing supply chain integration. Even though information technology represents a vital role as a driver and a success factor for implementing information sharing, established technologies still do not reflect the highly decentralized and fragmented characteristics of complex and often global supply chains. Early research shows that blockchain might be an enabler for the supply chain management. However, little is known about how blockchain might improve information sharing for complex, multitier supply chains. Therefore, this article aims at analyzing how and to what extent blockchain can facilitate information sharing for vendor managed inventory by designing a software prototype based on Hyperledger Fabric using the design science research approach. This research took place in close cooperation with a leading German healthcare technology manufacturer, which allowed us to base our study both on literature and practical insights. With our results, we contribute to the supply chain knowledge base by introducing the decentralized information hub model, describing how companies utilize decentralized technologies, such as blockchain, to facilitate information sharing.
The advent of blockchain technology can refine the concept of DTs by ensuring transparency, decentralized data storage, data immutability, and peer-to-peer communication in industrial sectors. A DT is an integrated multiphysics, multiscale, and probabilistic simulation, representation, and mirroring of a real-world physical component. The DTs help to visualize designs in 3D, perform tests and simulations virtually prior to creation of any physical component, and consequently play a vital role in sustaining and maintaining Industry 4.0. It is anticipated that DTs will become prevalent in the foreseeable future because they can be used for configuration, monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics. This article envisages how blockchain can reshape and transform DTs to bring about secure manufacturing that guarantees traceability, compliance, authenticity, quality, and safety. We discuss several benefits of employing blockchain in DTs. We taxonomize the DTs literature based on key parameters (e.g., DTs levels, design phases, industrial use cases, key objectives, enabling technologies, and core applications). We provide insights into ongoing progress made towards DTs by presenting recent synergies and case studies. Finally, we discuss open challenges that serve as future research directions.
The ground work for establishing the industrial 4.0 age involves the tiered architectures that are made up of multiple planes encompassed with the physical things that are embedded with internet capabilities. This infrastructure enables an incorporation of the various functions that are necessary in a manufacturing industry to enhance the efficiency of the industry, and contrivance a highly supple and a self-organizing industry that is smart. On the other hand it becomes essential to preserve the information's safely as many internet enabled devices are utilized and more networks are formed for the proper incorporation of the various activities taking place. Since the conventional methods are inadequate the block chain method was most preferred due to its transparency and highly reliable and expedient services. To further structure a tamper proof network the blockchain is built with the smart contract laid on the system providing the impermeable authenticity on the industrial data transferred by securing the information's against the authentication that is anonymous. The performance of the system is validated to on the basis of security provided on the transactions made, and the cost spent on the proposed design
Blockchain technologies provide a platform for a new wave of project management systems, providing managers with a range of characteristics, capabilities, and feature sets to aid their praxis as they engage in increasingly complex processes and projects. This paper presents an explorative case-study in which open-ended interviews are conducted with practicing project managers. The interviews are analysed to understand currently deployed project management tools, technologies, and methods and to contextualise how blockchain based systems may allow for improvments. Five constructs emerge: transparency, control, dynamic status updating, incentives, and trust. Feedback suggests blockchain based alternatives could offer significantly better performance within each of these constructs, and thus should be explored as the technological backbone to the next generation of project management systems.
Tadas Limba, Andrejus Novikovas, Andrius Stankevičius, Antanas Andrulevičius · 5 authors
Two mainstream topics have been widely discussed over the past few years: ways to reduce the human impact on nature and the way that the industrial revolution 4.0 changes industries. The aim of this research topic is to analyse the positive and negative factors of big data implementation in the sector of cryptocurrency (as part of the industrial revolution 4.0) and in the sector of municipal waste management. The analysis reveals the differences and similarities between the cryptocurrency and municipal waste management sectors in the context of big data. The findings are significant for the estimation of the technological development of digitalized and non-digitalized sectors.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Globalisation, shorter product life cycles, and increasing product varieties have led to complex \nsupply chains. At the same time, there is a growing interest by customers and governments in \nhaving a greater transparency of brands, manufacturers, and producers throughout the supply \nchain. Due to the complex structure of collaborative manufacturing networks, the increase in \nsupply chain transparency is a challenge for manufacturing companies. Distributed ledger \ntechnologies offer an innovative solution to increase the transparency, security, authenticity, \nand auditability of products. However, there are still uncertainties when applying the \ndistributed ledger technology to manufacturing scenarios and thus enable all stakeholders to \ntrace the audit history of each component of an assembled product. This research work \nproposes a framework to increase the transparency and auditability of products in collaborative \nmanufacturing networks by adopting the distributed ledger technology. The framework \nconsiders the challenges of manufacturing supply chains with the opportunities of distributed \nledger technologies and combines them in a conceptual implementation process of supply chain \nmanagement systems. In this context, each component of a product is represented by a unique \nvirtual identity generated by distributed ledger-based smart contracts. These virtual identities \ncan only be sent and merged if defined conditions specified in smart contracts are met. This \nenables all physical processes and their dependencies to be mapped in the distributed ledger. \nThe results, based on a practical implementation of the framework, show that a transparent \nauditability of assembled products and all the components they consist of can be achieved. \nApplications based on the proposed framework can currently only enable real-time tracking \nreliably in permissioned networks. The implementation on a permissionless network provides \nfull transparency for all stakeholders including the customer, while the implementation on a \npermissioned network only provides a restricted transparency for the customers.
Gordon Lemme, Diana Lemme, Kilian Armin Nölscher, Steffen Ihlenfeldt
In a global sales market with networked production steps and increasing complex machine tools, scaling service ecosystems for production provide an adequate solution for handling the generated data. The existing sensor equipment at current and the extension possibility by the System-of-Systems approach for existing machine tools can offer value-added services by the smart handling of production-related data. It is important to make these data validatable and exchangeable, taking into account to different protection goals. The trust of the individual actors in such a volatile value chain and the different (partly cross-border) value creation partners play an important role. The participation of a large number of these actors creates an attractive overall system (ecosystem) with lots of services and network effects. Concerning data security there are numerous aspects, which have not been adequately answered or taken into account in the use of a service ecosystem in the production environment. The paper discusses a distributed ecosystem for production on a distributed ledger-based service ecosystem, in which services can be mapped in the machine tool environment (e.g. calibration). This technology can be used for secure data exchange in order to discuss traceability and unchangeability of data while maintaining data sovereignty.
In the near future, manufacturing industries will be mostly recognised with characteristics like IoT, and massive data transactions. To fulfil these characteristics, paradigms like Cloud manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and smart factory have passed their preliminary steps to become the primary inspirations. Considering the nature of Cloud manufacturing which consists of a vast number of service providers and Service demanders being introduced to the manufacturing cloud, service composition problem is introduced. However, there is a big challenge for fulfilling the dynamic behaviour of parameters which change rapidly over time in the service composition problem. This paper challenges the centralised mechanism of service composition problem and introduces a novel platform entitled Blockchain-based service composition model (Block-SC) based on the Blockchain technology. Block-SC as a novel manufacturing architecture conquers the centralised mechanism by dividing the original service composition problem into multiple sub-problems each of which contains a small fraction of the service/task pool. The capabilities of the proposed platform are remarkable from two perspectives; first, it provides an effective mechanism for collaboration of service composition service providers with a service-oriented approach and from the second perspective, the optimality of service composition problem is profoundly affected considering the dynamic behaviour of Cloud manufacturing.
Growing environmental awareness and widening extended producer responsibility have heightened the need for economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable business strategies levered by digital technologies. As an extension, various take-back policies focusing on product waste and recovery are put in place by the high-tech manufacturing industry. With an attempt to increase sales while ensuring the environmental sustainability of products, trade-in programmes that incentivize consumers to exchange used goods for new and most recent technology products became a value-adding strategy for businesses. Due to the high unpredictability in the quality of returned devices however, determining trade-in margins is a challenging task for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This inevitably reveals the need for incorporating intelligent technologies into the formation of manufacturing and logistics architectures to simultaneously preserve OEMs profitability and ensure the sustainable development of the closed-loop supply chain activities. With this motivation, this study presents the use of IoT-embedded products in a blockchain-enabled disassembly-to-order system to determine the optimal trade-in-to-upgrade policy. A discrete-event simulation model is developed to obtain the expected cost of the disassembly-to-order system. Optimal incentives for varying product qualities are then computed by utilising this cost in the trade-in policy model.
This article presents the results of a systematic review of the literature pertaining to the use of blockchain technology in the engineering and manufacturing activities. The uses of blockchain have been growing quickly in the literature, and this fast pace can make it difficult for researchers to keep abreast of the state of the art. Using a systematic approach to search the primary electronic indices, the compiled list of papers is then analyzed and a number of themes are identified. The results of this article suggest that the literature surrounding blockchain and the engineering/manufacturing industry can be categorized into three primary groups: blockchain to protect data validity, blockchain to enhance inter and intraorganizational communications, and blockchain to increase the efficiency of the manufacturing process. Within each top-level theme, there exist some subthemes that provide a more finely defined categorization of the papers contained in that theme. These subthemes include specific areas of blockchain application such as additive manufacturing, cloud manufacturing, and building information models (BIMs). For each group of papers identified, each study is discussed briefly. This article concludes with a set of conclusions about the current state of the literature and suggestions for further research directions. The primary contribution of this article is to provide a foundation upon which additional research can be accomplished as well as to provide a resource for practitioners to help them understand the current state of the industry and help them determine how blockchain might be beneficial to their organization.
This paper proposes a functional safety and information security protection mechanism based on blockchain technology. The design of the basic level and integration level blockchain structure of CPS distributed architecture and related functional safety and information security measures are introduced. An effective communication judgment mechanism based on functional safety error threshold is proposed, which is stored and judged by smart contract. And a refund transaction with a clock is proposed to ensure the effective execution of the functional safety error threshold mechanism. The article takes cyber physical machine tool system as an example to describe the SIL judgment method of CPS physical equipment and functional safety loop and combines SIL with fault diagnosis and risk protection. Finally, the rationality of our proposed mechanism is proved by information security, functional security, real-time and maintainability.
Cloud Manufacturing is a manufacturing paradigm that focuses on collaboration and resource utilization. Until recently, little research has been done to combine the perspectives of cloud manufacturing and digital platform ecosystems. In the cloud manufacturing paradigm, the cloud coordinator takes up the dual role of a matchmaker and a platform owner, though, so it is interesting to research how any power dominance of the platform owner can be avoided. To do so, three dimensions of platform governance suggested by Tiwana 2014 – pricing policies, decision rights, and control – were considered in this contribution to recommend a fair value distribution mechanism for platform ecosystems in cloud manufacturing. Requirements for such a solution are formulated in this contribution and design patterns satisfying these requirements are derived. We propose using tokens administrated by distributed ledger technologies and smart contracts to enable a special split revenue scheme that satisfies the
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays an important role in the development of smart factories. However, the existing IIoT systems are prone to suffering from single points of failure and unable to provide stable service. Meanwhile, with the increase of node scale and network quantity, the maintenance cost presents to be higher. Such a disadvantage can be effectively compensated by the features such as security, privacy, non-tamperability and distributed deployment supported by the blockchain. In this paper, first, an intelligent manufacturing security model based on blockchain was proposed. Due to the high power consumption and low throughput of the traditional blockchain, IoT devices with limited power consumption can not work independently. Therefore, in this paper, a new Merkle Patricia tree (MPT) was adopted to extend the blockchain structure and provide fast query of node status. Second, since the MPT does not support concurrent operation and the data operation performance deteriorates with high data volume, a lock-free concurrent and cache-based Merkle Patricia tree was proposed (CMPT) to support lock-free concurrent data operation, which can improve the data operation efficiency in multi-core system. The experimental results indicate that, compared with the original MPT, the CMPT proposed in this paper effectively reduced the time complexity of data insertion and data query and improved the speed of block construction and data query.
Blockchain can be defined as distributed ledger technology that can securely and permanently record transactions between parties. The blockchain uses a shared database among many parties, the blockchain can eliminate the need for intermediaries who need to act as trusted third parties to validate, r