Blockchain in IIoT
The emerging blockchain technology shows great potential for the fourth industrial revolution, which could make a dramatic impact on all sectors of the economy and will further transform it through top-notch efficiency. The blockchain shows great potential to overcome the interoperability in IIoT. According to the IDC, up to 20% of IoT deployments will offer blockchain-enabled services and more than 10% of global GDP will be related to blockchain-enabled systems by 2027.
The reasons that IIoT technologies can be well complemented by blockchain are:
1) In IIoT, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology will play a key role in the communication between two untrusted devices to keep devices information about
their interactions, state, and digest of exchanged data.
2) The blockchain can significantly reduce the risks that customers are facing and save the cost in business processes.
3) The blockchain for IIoT should be designed as a basis for applications that involve transaction and interaction, including smart contracts, etc.
In industry, the inexpensive data-keeping and accounting blockchain idea can initiate innovative technologies that will allow enterprises and individuals to create cryptocurrencies and accounting programs that will revolutionize their respective industries. In general, the blockchain will offer enterprises and individuals a safer and more reliable alternative to shipping and receiving goods. In logistics, the blockchain will allow companies to keep the shipping records across multiple devices and out of criminal hands. By allowing supply change to operate more efficiently and with better trust, the blockchain can improve the interoperability in logistics. For individuals, the blockchain will keep track of what and where they have spent, which will keep an individual’s credentials safe and grant them peace of mind that is not afforded by analogy systems.
Integrating Blockchain into Existing IIoT
The blockchain can securely exchange and store data from components in IIoT systems without the need for an intermediary. The secure nature of blockchain will enable IIoT systems more dependable and safe, which can change the way the data is being dealt with in IIoT. The features of blockchain make it promises in creating new business models, such as data streaming sharing, financial, manufacturing, smart healthcare, etc. The decentralized collaborative IIoT systems can sense, share, and update data in a reliable manner that can be verified easily. Meanwhile, the blockchain can well manage and secure digital relationships of participants in IIoT and with the decentralized authenticity, trustiness issues in IIoT between multiple parties can be fixed. In the past few years, several blockchain-enabled IIoT use cases have been reported, including manufacturing, financial, energy industries, insurances, etc.
Applications of Blockchain in IIOT
The integration of blockchain and IIoT has prompted the appearance of a new set of smart services and applications that bring substantial benefits to industrial processes. In addition to industrial IoT applications, it can also enhance and extend to general IoT applications’ scenarios, such as smart healthcare, smart city, smart transportation, smart agriculture, as well as service-related applications
- Smart Manufacturing
The smart manufacturing industry is a very broad category of manufacturing that employs various technologies, for example, cloud, IoT-enabled technologies, and service-oriented manufacturing. Together, these technologies update from traditional automated manufacturing to “smart manufacturing”. The centralized manufacturing architecture itself has some limitations, for example, low flexibility, inefficiency, and security vulnerability. Integrating a decentralized blockchain into manufacturing systems, with the help of other techniques (e.g., cloud), can be a promising solution to overcome these challenges. It provides feasible solutions to enhance and optimize manufacturing processes, reduce operation costs, and offer efficient security services for the trust and privacy services among different manufacturing enterprises.
Blockchain-enabled IIoT platforms can address the issues of interoperability by interconnecting multiple IIoT systems via a P2P network and allowing data sharing across different industrial sectors. When integrating blockchain into current manufacturing industries, creates a new trustable platform, in the form of a blockchain-and cloud-based manufacturing system.
2. Supply Chain
An industrial product consists of collaborative work from multiple suppliers that are from different manufacturing sectors across countries. However, some forged (e.g., low-quality or reused) parts may seep into the supply chain system. Applying anti-fraud technologies in every part of products is quite expensive. The integration of blockchain and IIoT can resolve this issue. Normally, each part associates with a unique ID when it is created. An immutable timestamp is then attached with this ID. The identification information of each part can be recorded into a blockchain as tamper-resistant proof.
Blockchain-enabled applications can also be used to reduce the costs of after-sale services in supply chain management. For instance, the settlement of claims can be automatically executed via smart contracts based on a blockchain setting, thereby improving efficiency and reducing claim-processing time in traditional cases.
3. Smart Grid
With increasing demands on energy usage to support industrial and manufacturing operations, smart energy and its management system continue playing an integral part in most industry ecosystems. The emergence of distributed renewable energy resources is reshaping the role of consumers from pure consumers to prosumers, who can generate energy (e.g., from renewable energy resources) in addition to consuming it. The energy in transition can be in any form, such as electricity, gas, and heating grids. Energy prosumers who have extra energy can sell them to other consumers who need them. The energy trading process between the prosumers and the consumers (e.g., both as the peer nodes) can be in a form of P2P energy trading. However, it is challenging to assure secured and trusted energy trading between multiple trading parties in a distributed and decentralized manner.
In general, blockchain technology has great potential to improve both the security and privacy of energy exchange and transmission, while the cloud offers unlimited storage and powerful management services, and supports blockchain to achieve decentralized energy operations.
4. Food Industry
The blockchain can enhance the visibility of the life cycle of products, especially in the food industry. The traceability of food (including its ingredients) is a necessity to ensure food safety. However, it is a challenging task for the incumbent IoT to guarantee food traceability throughout the entire food supply chain. Typically, traceability requires digitizing all information, including the raw materials, from the sources to every sector of food manufacturing. Blockchain can ensure this kind of traceability and provenance of food industry data. There are several case studies in this area. For example, Tian et al. proposed to use RFID and blockchain to create a supply chain platform from agriculture to food production. This system has demonstrated a guarantee of the traceability and safety of food supply chain data. Also, these data are immutable when empowered by blockchain. In general, regarding the type of blockchain, the food industry can adopt a consortium blockchain to enable many different industrial sectors to work together.
Written by: Pranita Zaveri, Bansi Delwadia, Nirmit Patel, Ayush Rana and Vivek Shah
