CT Σ (CrypTech Summary) I hope, will be a series of summarized events from the Blockchain industry.
BHP Billiton is the worlds largest natural resource mining company that is developing a Blockchain Solution for their business
This is a Σ of the their presentation at Blockchain Week 2016, you may find the full video and more on the ConsenSys medium page.
BHP Billiton is the largest mining company in the world.
Distributed set of operations made distributed computing an obvious interest to them.
Announcing: Project RayStones (not sure if this is what its called) a platform for Wellbore Sample Tracking
Wellbore samples are of high value and impossible to replace.
Once retrieved, the samples pass through to many custodians.
Record keeping of who currently holds the samples is maintained by spreadsheet and email, which is prone to human error and human error leads to regulatory fines.
Transparency across all end user stakeholders is not standardized which makes it hard to find metadata on ore samples.
Consensys and Blockapps are BHPs main blockchain development partners.
BHPs Private/Consortium Ethereum Blockchain will be deployed on Microsoft Azure.
3 main nodes on this private Ethereum network: BHP, Weatherford and a Country Regulator
As BHP, all granular business process was mapped and then translated for a Blockchain architecture.
Software Demo begins…
BHP Office Dashboard:
- Isotube sample plan is created and registered on a smart contract.
- Smart contract state can be viewed by BHP Operations Geologist, Vendor and Regulator in real time.
Operations Geologist (on site member of BHP) Dashboard:
- Geologist actually acquires Isotube and digitally acknowledges this on the smart contract.
- Isotube is now categorized as an acquired sample.
- Geologist registers more information on the smart contract ex: Receiving Vendor, location of lab, logistics tracking number.
- Shipped sample now appears on OGs board.
BHP Vendor Dashboard:
- Activity of BHP Office and Operations Geologist can be viewed in real time by Vendor.
- Vendor views which samples are in transit to them and may acknowledge receipt with a unique identifier on the smart contract.
Back @ the BHP Office Dashboard:
- The state of the smart contract reflects samples received by vendor.
- BHP Office may order the lab tests and analysis of samples.
- After vendor publishes results, BHP Office appends data and proceeds to make business decisions.
With real time participation of all partners, the collective sharing of data may prove to drive high efficiency rates.
BHP Billiton Looks Further:
Its possible for cranes to collide with passenger bearing helicopters in the dangerous environments that BHP operates in.
If such machines referred to a shared source of truth like a blockchain, the operation of either could be denied based on the state of the smart contract.
Another possible implementation could be…
The re certifying of equipment that has exceeded its maximum use, engineers would have to physically examine, re certify and digitally sign a smart contract to allow the machine extended operations.
Unqualified people may also be precluded from using machinery because the ID they register with on the blockchain will prevent them from doing so.
How does BHP want to save costs?
BHP and their peers are required to give regulatory data to partner countries.
This data is made public by the partner countries.
External aggregators consolidate this public data, package it neatly and sell it to BHP and their Peers. Why? because everyone in the peer group wants to know what their “friends” are up to.
This externally packaged data is expensive for BHP to buy.
Since the data is going to be public anyway, BHP recommends that all industry peers should take part in a private consortium chain with partner countries as nodes.
All players may then view, publish and make business decisions in realtime without the need of these external aggregators (better known as intermediary services)
Efficiency increases. Lots of money is saved.
BHP Billiton looks forward and is ETH Bullish:
They foresee private chains emerging in all industries.
Public chains like the Ethereum network may be used to verify the integrity of data in private chains.
Contact them if you can add something to their synergies.
I hope this was useful to you. Please click the little green heart :)
If you would like this kind of segment to be approached differently, please leave me a private message.
Thanks!
