Many projects still focus on Blockchain technology itself or work on applications in the finance industry, but the interest in the manufacturing industry is increasing. Especially, its applications for supply chain management and auditing is being explored by several companies.
Supply chain and Product information
Big companies have already tested the application of Blockchain in logistics showing that it can be successfully used to keep track of containers during the shipping process. The main goal of the trial was to reduce the efforts and the incredible amount of paperwork that is necessary for the process. Through the platform, all agents can access the information that is relevant for them and then act accordingly. Probably, in the near future, other actors like ports and customs authorities, ocean carriers and freight forwarders will be included in the system. The shipment costs of major supply chains will undoubtedly drop as the blockchain system can provide information more rapidly while preventing fraud.
Another useful application of blockchain in the manufacturing industry would be a system to secure the traceability of certifications and other important information of products, working more like a digital passport of every product, that would prove the authenticity and helps to determine its origin, and preventing the sale of fake goods. Afterwards, a consumer may be able to scan the product (e.g. via QR-Code or NFC) and access the Blockchain to check every step of the production process.
IoT and Industry 4.0
The current form of authentication for IoT devices is based on certificates provided authorities and has proven to be too expensive, with a questionable scalability. Therefore, by registering the devices on a blockchain, it would be possible to create a digital identity of the device which cannot be manipulated and it is thus more trustable, with the advantage that the information about the device may be dynamically updated and added compared to traditional certificates.
However, the use of blockchain for IoT applications is still bounded to several technical challenges that need to be overcome, mainly the limited scalability, and the low verification speed, all challenges that the Bottos tech team is successfully addressing and trying to solve in the most effective way.
A decentralized collaborative system has reason to exist only when multiple agents are involved that need to share or update data in a safe and trustworthy manner, without relying on intermediaries that by themselves can cause costs, increase complexity, and provoke delays. It goes without saying that, without any intermediary and trust-related actions, the duration of the processes can be reduced and the efficiency increased tenfold, especially if several transactions interact with each other.
Consequently, the history of digital relationships is more important than the speed of transactions. Trust issues between many parties involved are the predominant underlying condition for applying Blockchain features.
Many opportunities may rise thanks to the conditions that Blockchain technology dictates. They can create new business models like Bottos data exchanges — thus turning data into valuable assets — and the improvement of existing processes. Therefore, Blockchain technology can let us use current business models more effectively or explore new ones.
In manufacturing processes, the irreversibility and the trustworthiness of data might be valuable for controlling and documenting quality.
The main challenges that must be addressed today are the missing standards, the lack of confidence, the unclear legal and regulatory framework, and some technical issues, such as the speed of transaction — latency — and the scalability of the systems, problems to which Bottos is actively finding sophisticated solutions. However, this does not stop Blockchains from being used in the manufacturing industry with real-time and big data. Even if it cannot be used for steering, the aggregated data can be stored on the records and thereby also made available to other agents.
Bottos’ advanced systems may also support the building of Blockchain-powered automated manufacturing systems based on its public and dedicated chains, with the chance to count a large suite of services that go to form an all-encompassing ecosystem.
If you have any further questions please reach out to us on Telegram: https://t.me/bottosworld
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