Sep 1, 2019·2019 10th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems: Technology and Applications (IDAACS)
Jan Stodt, Eugen Jastremskoj, Christoph Reich, Dominik Welte · 5 authors
Maintenance processes in Industry 4.0 applications try to achieve a high degree of quality to reduce the downtime of machinery. The monitoring of executed maintenance activities is challenging as in complex production setups, multiple stakeholders are involved. So, full transparency of the different activities and of the state of the machine can only be supported, if these stakeholders trust each other. Therefore, distributed ledger technologies, like Blockchain, can be promising candidates for supporting such applications. The goal of this paper is a formal description of business and technical interactions between non-trustful stakeholders in the context of Industry 4.0 maintenance processes using distributed ledger technologies. It also covers the integration of smart contracts for automated triggering of activities.
The growth of individualized product demands drives high flexibility of manufacturing processes, which requires large-scale deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Since centralized control of IIoT suffers from poor flexibility in coping with disturbances and changes, a decentralized organization structure is a better choice, in which a permissioned blockchain-driven IIoT can enable partially decentralized self-organization and thus offload and accelerate the optimization of upper-level manufacturing planning. A novel iterative bi-level hybrid intelligence model named ManuChain is proposed to get rid of unbalance/inconsistency between holistic planning and local execution in individualized manufacturing systems. Lower-level blockchain-driven smart contracts proactively decentralize fine-grained and individualized task execution among machine tools via Raspberry Pi-based smart gateways and make the results available on an upper-level digital twin model for iterative coarse-grained holistic optimization. A prototype ManuChain based on a permissioned blockchain network is presented to realize both lower-level crowd self-organizing intelligence and upper-level holistic optimization intelligence.
Abderahman Rejeb, John G. Keogh, Horst Treiblmaier
Modern supply chains have evolved into highly complex value networks and turned into a vital source of competitive advantage. However, it has become increasingly challenging to verify the source of raw materials and maintain visibility of products and merchandise while they are moving through the value chain network. The application of the Internet of Things (IoT) can help companies to observe, track, and monitor products, activities, and processes within their respective value chain networks. Other applications of IoT include product monitoring to optimize operations in warehousing‚ manufacturing, and transportation. In combination with IoT, Blockchain technology can enable a broad range of different application scenarios to enhance value chain transparency and to increase B2B trust. When combined, IoT and Blockchain technology have the potential to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of modern supply chains. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we illustrate how the deployment of Blockchain technology in combination with IoT infrastructure can streamline and benefit modern supply chains and enhance value chain networks. Second, we derive six research propositions outlining how Blockchain technology can impact key features of the IoT (i.e., scalability, security, immutability and auditing, information flows, traceability and interoperability, quality) and thus lay the foundation for future research projects.
Wattana Viriyasitavat, Li Da Xu, Zhuming Bi, Assadaporn Sapsomboon
Internet of Things (IoT) is able to integrate the computation and physical processes as services in the social world. The number of services at the edge of IoT is rising rapidly due to the prevalent uses of smart devices and cyber-physical systems (CPSs). To explore the promising applications of IoT services, one of the challenges is to enable the interoperability of the services in a decentralized environment. The blockchain technology (BCT) has been proven as a promising solution to establish the trust of data and call for executions; theoretically, it can be used to support the interoperability of services. BCT verifies data or a process and stores it as a transaction in a distributed ledger. Similar to the topology to IoT, applying BCT at the edges of the network exhibits the distributed characteristic. However, currently, BCT is still facing the challenges for interoperability due to a number of factors such as consensus protocols, block sizes, and interval of blocks. Prominent protocols such as proof-of-work (PoW) may cause excessive delays in finality settlement. One promising protocol Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant offers a fast finality settlement and uses hyperledger to support the scalability; however, the trust might also be a concern if the validators are chosen improperly. This paper discusses the interoperability of IoT services and the challenges and proposes an architecture solution by integrating BCT, service-oriented architecture (SoA), and enablers of key performance indicators (KPIs) and service selections. The proposed architecture aims to solve both interoperability and trust issues for IoT services. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated by the examples of smart contract implementations.
Suisheng Li, Hong Xiao, Hao Wang, Tao Wang · 6 authors
The blockchain technology becomes a key facilitator for Intelligent Manufacturing as it enables intelligent nodes to participate in global manufacturing networks with secure ledgers and smart contracts features. However, Traditional centralized storage cannot meet performance and security requirements and fully distributed storage consumes a large amount of computing, storage and network resources, which is inefficient and difficult to implement. In this paper, we propose a clustering strategy on node community clustering by constructing a trust model based on the decentralization of blockchain technology. We introduce a multi-chain storage structure. Our experiments show that the proposed strategy reduces data synchronization time and storage space, improves system performance by enabling efficient parallel processing.
Ada Bagozi, Devis Bianchini, Valeria De Antonellis, Massimiliano Garda · 5 authors
The implementation of remote services in the factory of the future is gaining more and more attention. A distributed process can be considered, where an Original Equipment Manufacturer supplies services based on data collected from the machines of its clients. Examples of services are those implementing anomaly detection and predictive maintenance techniques. Data on which remote services are based, as well as their execution logic, must be transparently shared among participants, to enforce trust among OEM and its clients. The goal of this paper is to propose an approach where blockchain technology and Smart Contracts are used to ensure the required level of trust when implementing the aforementioned services. Events occurring on monitored machines are stored as transactions in a blockchain-based system, to ensure non repudiation of data on which remote services are based. Moreover, trust-demanding tasks in the execution logic of services are considered to design Smart Contracts, that guarantee the required level of trustworthiness among participants. The example featuring Remote Monitoring Services for anomaly detection is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.
Zhen Liu, Lijun Jiang, Mohamed Osmani, Peter Demian
At present, sustainable design is experiencing energy consumption and cost-effectiveness challenges in the building industry. A recent body of literature argues that the development of emerging smart digital technologies, such as Building Information Management (BIM) and blockchain (BC), offer immediate benefits to the industry. However, the current application of BIM and BC in the sustainable design and construction process focuses on smart energy and construction management, with little attention to addressing challenges for applying BIM to sustainable design and proposing strategies in terms of the usability of these technologies in the management of building construction projects. Therefore, this paper sets out to explore the potential roles of an integrated BIM and BC approach for sustainable building design information management. The first attempt is presented to use BC aided BIM for sustainable building design coordination and collaboration in multiple building stages. BC has the potential to address challenges that hinder the industry from using BIM for sustainable design, which has been unearthed. An innovative BC enhanced transaction process in BIM is required for sustainable building development. Roles of a user level driven smart contract system of BC can be used to enhance BIM system in the sustainable buildings process. The role of BC is primarily at user level driven smart contracts and their record value exchange capabilities. A user level (BIM stakeholders) driven BC technology for transaction in BIM process flow is revealed, and the user level (sustainable building design project stakeholders/BIM clients) driven and the smart contract enabled BIM+ BC architecture to address challenges of BIM for sustainable design has been further circulated according to the literature. Subsequently, a conceptual architecture of BIM + BC for Sustainable Building Design Information Management Framework in building project management has been proposed, validated, and refined. The Framework has two level encompassing structures and flow. The high-level framework is focused on strategy, whilst the low-level framework demonstrates technical components in detail. This architecture supporting project stakeholders in managing information, has the potential to achieve and ensure the realization of sustainable design goals through the interactive realization of smart contracts integrated into the user level driven BIM + BC system and its recording value exchange function through three user-driven levels, namely user, system, and transaction.
Wattana Viriyasitavat, Li Da Xu, Zhuming Bi, Vitara Pungpapong
In addition to functionalities, business process management (BPM) involves several key indicators such as openness, security, flexibility, and scalability. Optimizing system performance is becoming a great challenge for an ever-increasing large-scale distributed application system in the digital economy on the Internet of Things (IoT) era. In a centralized BPM, many indicators, such as security and openness, or cost and flexibility, are conflicting with each other. For example, inviting new partners across enterprises, domains, and regions to form a service workflow exposes new risks and needs additional security mechanisms for scrutiny; enhancing the flexibility of business workflow compositions increases the cost of security assurance. Blockchain technology (BCT) has thrown the light on the development of vital solutions to various BPM problems. BCT has to be integrated with other BPM system components that often involve IoT devices to implement specified functionalities related to the application. Currently, the potentials of using BCT have been explored although still at an early stage. In this paper, the states of the art are presented to identify emerging research topics, challenges, and promising applications in integrating BCT into the development of BPM.
Yongping Zhang, Xiwei Xu, Ang Liu, Qinghua Lu · 6 authors
Integrated and collaborative manufacturing system develops as massive data are obtained by the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. However, the “trust tax” imposed on manufacturers during their countless collaborations with customers, suppliers, distributors, governments, service providers, and other manufacturers is very high. Blockchain is an emerging technology that can lead to more transparent, secure, and efficient transactions. It represents a new paradigm, as well as new thinking, of how data can be securely stored, integrated, and communicated among different stakeholders, organizations, and systems that unnecessarily trust each other. Blockchain is greatly useful for reducing the “trust tax,” especially beneficial for the small- and medium-sized enterprises that must tolerate much heavier trust tax than the established manufacturers. This paper investigates the blockchain-based security and trust mechanism and elaborates a particular application of blockchain for quality assurance, which is one of the strategic priorities of smart manufacturing. Data generated in a smart manufacturing process can be leveraged to retrieve material provenance, facilitate equipment management, increase transaction efficiency, and create a flexible pricing mechanism. The dairy industry is used to instantiate the value propositions of blockchain for quality assurance.
In the last few years, two technological events emerged. First, the rising of Industry 4.0 concepts and technologies such as IoT allowed the direct link between machines on the shop floor, establishing a machine-to-machine communication (M2M). Second, blockchain enables transactions such payments and contracts without a formal reliable or accreditation institutions, such as banks or government. Goal: The goal of this paper is to explore the state-of-art of the blockchain technology applied to the manufacture sector. In this sense, the option of the M2M transaction being intermediated by blockchain on the shop floor is a hypothesis to be tested. Moreover, it could be questioned if these subjects are being appreciated by the academia. Design / Methodology / Approach: a systematic review of the literature was conducted, considering blockchain, the industrial context, and the Industry 4.0 related technologies. Results: As a result, only 12 papers that were classified according to their application fields and practice stages were obtained. Limitations of the investigation: this field of application is brand new; thus, the available literature is scarce; only 12 papers were obtained. Practical implications: As the main result, it was identified that the possibilities of blockchain applications to Industry have been poorly explored by literature. Originality / Value: The paper addresses the possibility of application of blockchain in M2M-based manufacture, and detaches the research gap in the academic literature related to it.
Smart operation and maintenance (O&M) service is the major industrial service in Industry 4.0, but it's not easy for manufacturers to achieve high returns. Regularly manufacturers can't set a higher service price due to customer's perception of the service value; a new revenue model is urgently needed. In this study, we develop a value-based contract for smart O&M service based on equitable entropy. Firstly, we summarise the characteristics of smart O&M service's value creation and acquisition. And the service value is measured under the PaaS model by calculating the maximum revenue gap of the customer in the two cases of customer self-O&M and manufacturer's smart O&M service. Then a revenue-sharing model is built based on equitable entropy which the criterion is the valid data provided by each party. The results show that by signing a value-based contract, the smart O&M service can not only significantly improve the customer's revenue by downtime losses reduction and productivity improvement, but also create higher returns for the manufacturer. In addition, the fairest revenue sharing coefficient and relatively fair interval for revenue sharing decision can be accurately calculated by equitable entropy. These conclusions provide a theoretical basis for the manufacturer to better implement smart O&M service.
The Physical Internet and hyperconnected logistics concepts promise an open, more efficient, and environmentally friendly supply chain for goods. Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are increasingly regarded as main enablers of improvements in this domain. We describe how blockchain and smart contracts present the potential of being applied to hyperconnected logistics by showing a concrete example of its implementation.
The complexity of supply chains increase, especially due to the geographical spread of supplier and customer networks. In the connected and automated supply chains of the industry 4.0, even more nodes are incorporated in supply chains. This paper discusses the possible improvement of process quality in the industry 4.0 through the different blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. We derived hypotheses from a literature review and asked German blockchain experts from the industry to validate and discuss the hypotheses. We find that the different blockchain technologies and consensus algorithms have different strength with regard to quality improvement. One central finding is that IOTA, developed especially for the IoT and deemed the 'next evolutionary step' is scalable and hence may increases the process efficiency, but at the same time is more vulnerable than other blockchain implementations, which again may reduce the overall process quality.
Ivan Jovović, Siniša Husnjak, Ivan Forenbacher, Sven Maček
The Industry 4.0 is experiencing significant challenges, including the need for an increased amount of data transmission with improved security, transparency and credibility. The 5th Generation Mobile Network (5G) and Blockchain are innovative emerging technologies that can respond to these needs. 5
Cloud manufacturing is a promising rising paradigm in which geographically distributed manufacturing resources are exposed as services in the cloud platform. The task of cloud manufacturing is to provide manufacturing resources as services to fulfil users’ demands. However, in existing cloud manufacturing architecture all the information is possessed by the platform operator, and the management of manufacturing services is highly centralised. It is firmly believed that decentralisation and elevating information transparency can help increase the operational performance. Blockchain is such a technology that distributes transactions information to a peer-to-peer network such that information is fully shared and unchangeable by partial peers. This paper proposes a blockchain-based cloud manufacturing architecture to enhance information transparency and decentralisation. The proposed platform is responsible for exposing manufacturing resources and wrapping them as services. Manufacturing services can be purchased by any user accessing to the platform. The blockchain is used to intermediate the service composition and record transaction results. Moreover, a quality of service (QoS) aware service composition model is proposed in the blockchain-based cloud manufacturing. A particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is proposed to solve the model. Finally, simulations are done to provide an application of the service composition in blockchain-based cloud manufacturing.
Rapid advancements in Information Technology and industrialization methods have expedited the advent of 4th Industrial revolution also known as integrated industry industrial internet or smart manufacturing. The notion of Industry 4.0 promises unprecedented progress in next generation of manufacturing technology by fundamentally changing the ways of production and value creation with the help of digital transformation in product/service offerings and hori-zontaVvertical value chains. Industry4.0 is underpinned by a spectrum of emerging technologies such as internet of things, cloud computing, machine learning, adaptive robotics, cyber physical systems, artificial intelligence, Industrial Integration, and Service Oriented Computing. Distributed ledger technology also known as blockchain can not only affect Industry4.0 but also has its direct implications in the above mentiond set of technologies. Lack of powerful tools for visibility, accountability and auditing is a major obstacle in complex processes and supply chains of Industry 4.0. In particular, issues of cloning of products, counterfeiting, trickier maintenance and IP theft are crucial teething issues for realizing Industry 4.0, which poses unique challenges. This paper is an effort to break the ground for demonstrating and presenting the use of Blockchain technology in 4th industrial era.In this paper we explore some concepts of industry 4.0 using blockchain technology and see how blockchain enablement is beneficial for industry 4.0. we explore different areas where we can use blockchain technlogy to foster the development in Industry4.0.
Md. Mehedi Hassan Onik, Chul‐Soo Kim, Jinhong Yang
Fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) promises a connected and smart manufacturing system where internet, machine (physical system) and humans lumped together. Unlike other industrial revolutions, this industrial revolution deals more with information. Device to device (D2D) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications often generate, preserve and share private information. Personal data has already turned out to be a new commodity and currently identified as a ‘new oil’ or ‘new domain of warfare’. The more information gets generated and accumulated, the more extensive and risky the personal information becomes. Although privacy and security are often bundled together, they are different. This study investigates the privacy attack surfaces of key Industry 4.0 components (i.e. Cyber-Physical System, Artificial Intelligence, additive manufacturing, autonomous vehicle, big data, cloud computing, internet of things, distributed ledger etc). Multi-dimensional privacy challenges, data breaching incidents, regulations and need of a contextual privacy awareness is discussed in this study. Finally, this work elaborates the risk of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) leaking in the era of industry 4.0.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Digital Transformation in Industry
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Jiafu Wan, Jiapeng Li, Muhammad Imran, Di Li · 5 authors
Through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a smart factory has entered the booming period. However, as the number of nodes and network size become larger, the traditional IIoT architecture can no longer provide effective support for such enormous system. Therefore, we introduce the Blockchain architecture, which is an emerging scheme for constructing the distributed networks, to reshape the traditional IIoT architecture. First, the major problems of the traditional IIoT architecture are analyzed, and the existing improvements are summarized. Second, we introduce a security and privacy model to help design the Blockchain-based architecture. On this basis, we decompose and reorganize the original IIoT architecture to form a new multicenter partially decentralized architecture. Then, we introduce some relative security technologies to improve and optimize the new architecture. After that we design the data interaction process and the algorithms of the architecture. Finally, we use an automatic production platform to discuss the specific implementation. The experimental results show that the proposed architecture provides better security and privacy protection than the traditional architecture. Thus, the proposed architecture represents a significant improvement of the original architecture, which provides a new direction for the IIoT development.