Block Chain in Manufacturing

Umashankar Udaiyar

Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America

umashankar.udaiyar@ext.us.panasonic.com
 

Block Chain in Manufacturing Abstract



Introduction This paper discusses about

Manufacturing is the process of converting raw material into finished goods. The
the use of Blockchain
process consists of multiple steps, whereas each step is performed by one of more
operators at one or more machines. Traceability consists of capturing the data technology in the field of
related to the Machine, Man, Material and Methodology used for producing a Manufacturing and how
product. Also, it includes the data collected during the production process. This the technology aids the
information is collected at every step of the production process.
tracking and traceability
Blockchain is a technology used in crypto currencies. In simple words, it’s blocks of
transactions for an entity. The Entity could be an account, a movable or immovable requirements of any
asset or anything that involves transactions. It is a collection of records, maintaining product manufactured
all transaction details which can be consumed by any one. Blockchain enables the across different domains.
digital data to be distributed without copying. There is only one ultimate truth about
the data you are looking at. The block of transactional data is unalterable. Once the Traceability in
block is added to the chain, it becomes immutable. manufacturing industry
This paper, details you how to use Block chain to store the Traceability data, which plays a vital role, which
can benefit multiple consumers spread across the globe. encompasses after sales
support, replacement
parts, and origin of raw
Current Challenges in Manufacturing materials, production
Tracking tracking and call backs.
Currently, it is highly tedious to understand the status of any Production Order and Traceability has become
where a particular piece of product is right now. Additionally, the expected time of a regulatory requirement
arrival of a product from peer to peer is also unpredictable. There is no common in Food and Pharma
platform for the stake holders in the Manufacturing industry to share data and the
requirement, is the universal truth. For Example: Let’s take a patient waiting for a Manufacturing fields. In
pacemaker made of gold, as he is allergic to other metals. The patient, the hospital few countries, the safety
authorities and the doctors needs to know the ETA which they cannot not track. parts of the Automobiles
has to adhere to the
traceablity requirements
Traceability
Traceability is recording of all the materials used, process parameters, machine which is a regulatory
parameters, environment parameters, during manufacturing process. This requirement of the State.
information could be collected at every step of the Manufacturing process and
between the same steps as well. It is similar to a transaction, which cannot or
must not be altered by any one, once the process step is completed.

1
 
Call Backs
Call back of selective products which are out in the
market is possible now only because of the
traceability information stored with in the MES
Systems. The Call backs are mostly common in
Automobile Manufacturing industries. When the
manufacturer identified the defective batch of
material, he could trace all the automobiles
pertaining to the defective batch. This type of
traceability can be done based on Batch, Vendor, and
a combination of Vendor and Date.
Continuous improvement via
Feedback from Service Centre
The data collected in the MES in most cases are not
available to the service centers and vice versa. The
factories and the service centers are in a many to
many relationship and each of them are working in
silos. The data from the service center should be fed A step in the manufacturing process may have to
back to the Manufacturing process engineers, so that capture:
they can make use of analytics to improvise the
Manufacturing processes and the parts used in the
product Bill of Materials. The data is scattered and it’s
not utilized at the fullest to take advantage of it.
Repair Traceability
Many parts are replaced as part of repair cycle in
manufacturing and also during maintenance of the
product. For example: Battery replacement in a car is
part of a preventive or break- down maintenance of
the car. The traceability is not captured, when the
service centers are different and spread across
geographies. There is no one end to end system for
sharing the data.
2
Traceability- Blocks Of Transactions
Traceability information can be considered as a
transaction on a product. A product defines Bill of
Materials, which includes all the parts required to
produce single unit of the product. The Process plan
defines the steps involved in making of the product. It
involves Process, Material Consumption & Data
Collection.
Intellectual property vs secrecy: - The process
involved in producing a product could be intellectual
property of the Organization, which designed the
product protected by IP Laws. In some cases, like
Food Processing industry, the ingredients and the
process could be confidential. But in most of the
Product Manufacturing industries, the Bill of Material
is almost known to everyone.
a. Materials consumed with quantity and serial
number information.
b. Material consumed with Lot Number, Vendor
, Date code information(Un-serialized, traced
by other parameters uniquely)
c. Process Parameters
d. Equipment Parameters/readings
e. Environment parameters/readings
f. Operator who performed the operation
g. Machine used to perform the operation
In the above list, points “f” & “g” is not applicable
outside the Manufacturing facility in most of the
cases. But the skill set of the operator and machine
type used may help in data analytics for continuous
improvement. The collective data is one record of
action can be considered as one transaction. In case
of any repair done on the product, during the
Production Process is also another transaction on the
product. This transaction cannot be modified.
 
Use of Block Chain Technology in
Manufacturing
Block Chain is a technology to store transactional
data in a distributed network, which is alter proof
and universal truth across the globe. The data could
be stored in multiple machines on the network, but
the data is the same across the machines. There are
private and public Block chain networks, which can
be used by the manufacturers, service centers and so
on.
Solving Current Challenges using
Blockchain
In order to explain how Blockchain technology can
help in Manufacturing process, let us assume the
existence of Blockchain distributed network which
contains the immutable traceability data stored in
distributed servers of the manufacturer, logistics
handler, service centers, and raw material
manufacturers.
Block Chain in Production Tracking
The MES system in the factory responsible for
recording the traceability data captured by it as a
transaction will push the data to the Blockchain
network at real time or near real time. This data
contains the current progress of manufacturing of
the product in the factory which may include an
expected time of completing the product.
The consumer of this day will know where the
product is exactly at any point in time. This data can
be useful to consumer (B2B), dealer, and shipping
agent to forecast their work accordingly based on the
progress made in the production process. In the
word of cyber physical systems, this data can be used
by the final assembly systems to schedule their job
based on the ETA.
3
Block Chain in Traceability
The MES system captures the material consumed,
process, equipment & environment data and pushes
it to the Block chain network as an immutable
transaction. This data can be consumed by multiple
stakeholders in various ways. Few are given below.
The raw material/sub assembly manufacturers know
exactly the material consumed by the manufacturer.
This gives them the knowledge to initiate the next
supply of raw materials and make sure the supply is
met at all the time.
Helps the dealer to do selective call-backs based on
the traceability data.
Alternate parts identification by the service centers.
When the service centers consume material for
repairs, the material supplier has visibility of
depleting inventory levels to do an auto
replenishment or supply of the material.
With the transaction initiated by the service centers
on the replaced parts, the manufacturing unit
understands the behavior of the used raw
material/sub assembly. Also, using data analytics can
aim for continuous improvements of the process and
procurement of better material or part numbers.
This provides an option for the manufacturers to do
data analytics on the performance of the material
used in different markets and compare the quality of
the material between their vendors.
Blockchain allows the data to be stored in a nodes of
a distributed network which cannot be altered or in
other words the data is immutable. The technology
is proven in the domain of cryptocurrencies. This
technology can be extended to any domain of value.
Distributed peer to peer network of nodes avoids
single point of failure and it is not controlled by one
single entity
 

The manufacturers together can setup such

Blockchain peer to peer networks which can benefit
the whole production and Supply Chain Management
of the manufacturing sector.
The transactional data stored in the Blockchain
network should follow a single structure so that all
the consumers of the data can depend and interpret
in the same way

Acknowledgements
1. Mohammed Zahoor, Developer, Ethereum
2. Umaprasath Udaiyar, Senior Developer, Health
direct Australia.
3. Sumeetha Tamilarasan, Founder, e-Palagai.com