Services as Enterprise Smart Contracts in the Digital Factory

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.