Utilizing Blockchain Technology in Industrial Manufacturing with the help of Network Simulation

The fourth Industrial Revolution is finding its way into modern manufacturing sites. Assets with a certain degree of implemented communication technology will be enabled to interconnect and cooperate with practically every other entity via the Industrial Internet. An extreme amount of data and information will be exchanged all the time. Machines will be empowered to make crucial decisions autonomously influencing whole production processes. Erroneous, illegitimate or tampered data will lead to incorrect decisions and will be posing a huge threat to future strong cross-linked added value networks. An approach to tackle this issue comes from a technology called distributed ledger technology with its most known variant the “blockchain”. Certain properties of blockchain technology are showing promising enhancements for industrial networks primarily in order to guarantee digital trust. In this paper, issues like the ability to scale and the adaption onto the requirements of industrial networks are investigated. It turns out that simulation approaches must be taken into consideration, and a first step for an implementation is presented.

I. Introduction

Recent activities in industrial manufacturing lead to a new view how machines, production systems and even whole manufacturing sites cooperate among each other. The advent of Cyber-physical-systems (CPS) [1] induced the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT) [2] paradigm which is on the verge to be broadly integrated into the manufacturing industry as an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Smart Factories are determined to implement the ideas, initiatives like the Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0 (I4.0) envision [3] [4] [5] .