Blockchain for supply chain quality management: challenges and opportunities in context of open manufacturing and industrial internet of things

ABSTRACT

In global Supply Chain Quality Management (SCQM), there are methods to ensure continuity of supply, at appropriate prices while meeting quality standards. But they are limited by the large and fallible role of humans, especially in manufacturing and quality control. Open Manufacturing aims to establish an open network of manufacturers that enables product information sharing among others in the production chain. Realizing the goals of open manufacturing requires processing the large datasets inherent to the production chain partners. But it is difficult to comply with the trust and privacy requirements of the suppliers in a supply chain. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of blockchain and its current and potential use in the industrial context including Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-based sensor networks, and the impact of the blockchain technology in manufacturing related areas such as traceability. The focus of this paper is on a potential application of blockchain in SCQM with detailed analysis of its technical feasibility and the methods of transitioning between the current approaches to a blockchain-oriented platform. An innovative use of blockchain to store referral information is also discussed. The survey concludes that blockchain along with IIoT can improve SCQM in an Open Manufacturing model.

KEYWORDS:

• Blockchain
• open manufacturing
• industrial internet of things
• manufacturing information systems
• supply chain
• quality management

Acronyms

Bill of Material (BOM), Cloud Manufacturing (CM), Collaborative Manufacturing Network (CMN), Collaborative Planning, Delegated Proof Of Stake (DPoS), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Energy-Saving and Emission-Reduction (ESER), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Forecasting And Replenishment (CPFR), Hyperledger Fabric (HF), Industrial IoT (IIoT), Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Internet Of Things (IoT), Just-in-Time (JIT), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Open Manufacturing (OM), Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP), PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance), Proof of Authority (PoA), Proof of Stake (PoS), Proof of Work (PoW), Quality Assurance (QA), Quality Control (QC), Quality Management (QM), Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Supply Chain Quality Management (SCQM), Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI), Value Chain Partners (VCP), Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.