Applying Blockchain in Industry 4.
0 Applications
Nader Mohamed
Middleware Technologies Lab.
Pittsburgh, PA
USA
nader@middleware-tech.net
Abstract—by adopting the vision of Industry 4.0, many industrial
sectors are eyeing the potential for advancing their systems to achieve
higher productivity, cost-effectiveness, reliability, quality, and
flexibility. One important sector that can greatly benefit from adopting
Industry 4.0 principles and technologies is the manufacturing industry.
This will help create the smart manufacturing era where advanced
technologies and systems in Industry 4.0 will enhance the different
processes within the manufacturing value chain and increase efficiency
and profitability. However, Industry 4.0 requires effective integration of
many technologies and systems and seamless operations across all
components. This creates many challenges when creating applications
for smart manufacturing including security, trust, traceability,
reliability, and agreement automation within the manufacturing value
chain. Several of these challenges can be addressed using blockchain.
This paper discusses how blockchain can support smart
manufacturing applications in manufacturing. In addition, the paper
proposes a middleware approach for utilizing blockchain services and
capabilities to enable more secure, trustable, traceable, reliable, and
autonomous smart manufacturing applications. This approach will
offer many advantages to secure and establish good trust among
involved parties in the manufacturing value chain. In addition, this will
enable a verity of new applications to realize the promising benefits of
Industry 4.0 for smart manufacturing.
Keywords- Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing, Blockchain,
Middleware, Service-Oriented Middleware
I. INTRODUCTION
New technologies such as cloud computing, fog computing,
Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Services (IoS), cyber-
physical systems (CPS), and data analytics opened the door for
many opportunities for new businesses and new business
models. At the same time, these technologies offer many
advantages to enhance automation, productivity, cost-
effectiveness, reliability, quality, and flexibility of different
business and industrial sectors. With these potential benefits,
the forth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, started [1] aiming
to enhance different industrial sectors including manufacturing.
The main principle of smart manufacturing within the
context of Industry 4.0 is that by enabling connectivity among
various manufacturing units, facilities, machinery, suppliers
and retailers as well as other manufacturing supporting
industries, we form a valuable smart manufacturing network
through the entire manufacturing value chain [2]. This will help
automate, autonomize and optimize operations thus increasing
flexibility, increasing safety and productivity leading to reduce
costs and increased profitability. This smart manufacturing
network (see Fig. 1) changes the manufacturing business
models and enables the interactions throughout the value chain
978-1-7281-0554-3/19/$31.00©2019 IEEE
Jameela Al-Jaroodi
Department of Engineering
Robert Morris University
Moon Township, PA, USA
aljaroodi@rmu.edu
and within its components. These benefits make manufacturers
more competitive and more flexible in producing new and
enhanced products. In addition, it facilitates the introduction of
customizable manufacturing facilities for more agile product
development and introduction to the market.
Cloud
Manufacturing
Factory
Factory
Fog Fog
Smart
Fog Manufacturing
Selling Agent
Logistics Network
Fog
Fog
Energy Supplier
Consumer Agent
Material Supplier Storage Facility
Fig. 1. A smart manufacturing network utilizes technologies like
manufacturing CPS, industrial IoT, cloud manufacturing, fog
manufacturing, manufacturing data analytics, and communication.
Although Industry 4.0 technologies can offer many
advantages for the manufacturing sector, there are some
challenges that need to be addressed to fully realize these
benefits. These challenges are mainly related to the
connectivity and information exchange among different
machines, units, locations and across the various firms and
entities involved in the manufacturing value chain. Some of
these challenges are security, trust, reliability, traceability, and
better integration of the value chain [3].
In the meantime, blockchain was introduced and initially
used to provide a platform to enable and support the use of
digital currency such as Bitcoin [4]. However, it was found that
blockchain is applicable and useful for many other applications
including manufacturing applications [5]. The main advantage
of blockchain is that it enables a group of entities to reach an
agreement on a certain activity and register that agreement
without the need for a regulatory authority. Their agreed upon
activities are registered, secured and shared among all parties
using blockchain. Blockchain incorporates techniques from
peer-to-peer networks and cryptography to support a distributed
shared ledger among a group of entities or users (organizations,
firms, individuals, robotics, autonomous cars, smart devices,
software agents, etc.) such that all involved agree on its content,
0852
all transactions are secure and cannot be altered after being
appended to the chain. Furthermore, the nature of block chain
allows for creating traceable irreversible audit trails,
measurable components, and access to detailed information
regarding transactions recorded in the chain, thus it permits for
detailed validations, tracking and measurements.
This paper discusses the benefits of using blockchain for
Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing and discusses how it can
address some important challenges of smart manufacturing.
The paper also purposes a middleware approach to utilize
blockchain for smart manufacturing applications based on a
service-oriented middleware specifically designed for smart
manufacturing called Man4Ware [6]. Using blockchain as part
of a middleware platform that integrates different aspects of
manufacturing with other value chain components can provide
many advantages to secure such applications and establish trust
among the involved parties in the value chain. In addition, this
approach enables many new applications capable to realize the
benefits of Industry 4.0 for the manufacturing sector.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
provides background information about Industry 4.0 smart
manufacturing. Section III discusses information about
blockchain and how blockchain is beneficial for Industry 4.0
applications. Section IV purposes Man4Ware, the developed
middleware approach to apply blockchain to support smart
manufacturing applications. The benefits of this approach are
discussed in Section V, while Section VI concludes the paper.
II. INDUSTRY 4.0
Industry 4.0 or as it also sometimes called smart
manufacturing or Industrial IoT (IIoT) aims to facilitate better
performance, lower costs, and higher quality in various fields
of industry. In some context, it is also referred to as the creation
of the smart factory. To achieve Industry 4.0, various
components and systems such as CPS, IoT, the cloud and
cognitive computing must be integrated to collaborate towards
a common goal [7]. It is also considered the fourth generation
of the industrial revolution in terms of the evolution of
mechanization and automation of manufacturing. The concept
is promising; however, there are pressing issues that currently
impede its effective development such as integration and
flexibility [8]. To consider a factory or system as Industry 4.0
it must include interoperability, technical assistance,
information transparency, and decentralized decision making
[9]. Putting it all together, with Industry 4.0 we allow humans,
advanced manufacturing hardware, and sophisticated software,
to collaborate effectively to optimize operations and
autonomize manufacturing processes. As a result it is possible
to offer advanced capabilities to:
1. Automate more tasks using customizable and adaptive
devices and machines.
2. Incorporate new manufacturing processes, and
technologies.
3. Reduce human interaction with the machines via digital
sensing, controls and automated decisions.
4. Improve measurement and monitoring procedures using
precision devices.
5. Enhance response times for more accurate control of
processes.
6. Collect and store real-time data across all areas of the
manufacturing plant continuously.
7. Elevate analysis capabilities using the collected data and
advanced data analytics models.
8. Introduce intelligent algorithms using available data to
allow the system to make autonomous decisions.
9. Reduce the reliance on humans for monitoring and
decision making.
10. Provide better maintenance and repair operations based
on predictive analysis of operational data.
11. Create safer and more comfortable working
environments.
12. Enable the creation and utilization of new business
models in manufacturing.
13. Facilitate the integration of different technologies,
models, sectors, and organizations in the manufacturing
industry.
The success of Industry 4.0 is mainly based on the
revolutionary innovations in various technologies in hardware
and software. It is enabled by the collective advancements in
several ICT (Information and Communications Technology)
fields like:
1. Industrial Internet of Things (IoT), to enable connecting
different manufacturing machines and devices in a
network [10].
2. Internet of Service (IoS), to enable providing services for
manufacturing-related systems and organizations via the
Internet. These services can be used by their owners and
by other manufacturing systems that may need them [11].
3. Manufacturing Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), to
facilitate useful interactions between the cyber world and
the physical manufacturing world such as machines and
robots, by providing continuous monitoring and control
services [12].
4. Cloud Manufacturing: to provide on demand scalable
computation, data storage, and advanced smart services
for different manufacturing-related applications [13].
5. Fog Manufacturing: to provide low latency support, real-
time control, location awareness, better mobility and
security support, and streaming support for
manufacturing applications [14].
6. Manufacturing Data Analytics, to offer intelligent
decisions based on gathered manufacturing data for
enhancing manufacturing processes [15].
The concept of Industry 4.0 is generally based on six design
principles. These principles offer a general framework to the
main requirements of Industry 4.0 and are discussed here with
specific references to smart manufacturing.
1. Interoperability: the ability of different manufacturing
CPS, machines, robots, and workers to connect and
communicate via a network such as IoT and IoS.
2. Service Oriented: the ability to present the functions of
the manufacturing processes as a set of services. These
services should be accessible over the IoS by other
0853
 systems. These services can be provided both internally
within the same manufacturing unit and externally
beyond the manufacturing unit’s borders.
3. Decentralization: the ability of different manufacturing
systems to make decisions on their own. This requires
avoiding the use of centralized controls. Although,
manufacturing systems can benefit from other facilities
and systems like cloud manufacturing and fog
manufacturing, they still need to be able to make their
own decisions locally to effectively continue their
operations.
4. Real-time Capability: the ability to immediately collect
and analyze manufacturing data such that the right actions
can be conducted timely. This enables accurate controls
of machines operations and timely adjustments. In
addition it facilitates the discovery of erroneous
observations including possible manufacturing machine
faults, wrong workers-machines interactions, and
declines in production quality and reliability.
5. Modularity: the flexibility of changing, expanding, and
enhancing individual modules to fit new requirements in
the existing manufacturing processes or to build new
processes.
6. Virtualization: the ability to monitor manufacturing
processes such that virtual copies (digital twins) can be
created for these processes. These virtual copies can be
utilized as simulation and measurement environments for
future enhancements of manufacturing processes.
Achieving these principles is the key to a successful
implementation and deployment of useful and highly beneficial
smart manufacturing applications. Thus, it is important to
consider the specifics of these principles in the design of these
applications and find suitable techniques and technologies that
can facilitate the seamless integration across all smart
manufacturing applications components.
III. BLOCKCHAIN FOR INDUSTRY 4.0
Blockchain is a growing distributed list of linked records,
named blocks, which are connected and secured using
encryption algorithms [16]. One of the strong advocates of
blockchain and its viability in the general business and
industrial domain is IBM, as they are investing heavily in the
field and working on various blockchain enhancements and
applications [17]. There are two keys to the effectiveness of this
list: one is the required consensus among participating entities
to add a block; and the links that are created from one block to
the next, thus making it difficult to change any block after it is
added to the list. Hence, we get the name “blockchain” as it
builds a virtual chain of data blocks. An entity in this context
represents any actors involved in a transaction to be validated
and recorded. It can be a person, a group of people, an
organization, or a compute component (robot, smart device,
sensor, control device, software agent, etc.). A transaction is the
record of the activity being performed. This list (or chain)
represents a protected online registry for stating some agreed
on and conducted transactions among different entities. The
recorded transactions are usually generated as a result of certain
activities such as financial, business, industrial, or system
activities. The blocks that store the transactions are usually
timestamped, encrypted and replicated on multiple sites, and
cannot be altered. For example, several floor shop supervisors
in a factory could negotiate and establish a specific procedure
for implementation in specific conditions (e.g. specific safety
or risk management procedures). In this case, the supervisors
are the entities and the procedure after being accepted by all
becomes the transaction. Upon agreement, the transaction gets
appended to the blockchain, which includes having it time
stamped, encrypted, and replicated in multiple locations. As a
result, it becomes available for all the supervisors, however
none of them can alter it.
Since entities can collaboratively produce and link new
blocks to the blockchain, it becomes easy to create detailed
ledgers of transactions and activities. In addition, since no one
can alter registered transactions, it is also possible to establish
trust and rely on the blockchain to validate and audit activities.
Moreover, this shared history offers high levels of traceability
of any and all recorded transactions and transparency that
allows everyone involved to view these transactions. Yet, it also
provides assurances that these records (or blocks) have not been
altered by anyone in the group who created it or anyone else,
for that matter. The logical links created between the
transactions are agreed upon by the group; yet, they are
irreversible, thus making it impossible to change. Furthermore,
using encryption to record all blocks further protects the data
and only allow authorized entities to access it.
An important feature introduced in blockchain is the
enabling of two or more entities to securely record an
agreement of certain actions over a public network such as the
Internet without including a third party like an authorization
entity or government office. The involved entities may or may
not know each other and may not trust each other. Yet, they can
still make the agreement, document it and have that transaction
record appended to the chain. Hence, the record of the
agreement after it is appended to the chain cannot be altered,
canceled, or denied by any of the entities involved. A process
called “mining” is used to guarantee the validity and
consistency of the conducted agreements appended to the chain.
This important feature was not available before introducing
blockchain. Therefore, blockchain is the main enabler of the
Internet of Transactions [18][19], which is needed to support
many smart manufacturing applications. This feature can
greatly reduce the time needed to complete and register a
business agreement between the manufacturers and their
suppliers. Smart contracts can be produced, agreed on and
appended to the blockchain. Thus they become binding without
having to go through a formal registration process. Another
example is negotiated contracts with subcontractors, who will
supply specific parts or prefabricated components. In the same
manner, exact specifications of these components, pricing and
delivery information can be negotiated and finalized by the
entities involved then appended to the blockchain.
There following are some of the various features and
capabilities that blockchain offers. Some of these are
fundamental to the applications smart manufacturing.
0854
A. Digital Identities
A government issued identification like a driver’s license or
passport is generally adequate to prove our identity when
conducting official activities like using airports to travel,
opening a bank account, or buying a car. Blockchain offers a
digital equivalent that can be used to identify not only people
but also different entities like organizations [20]. This feature
enables authenticating the identities of people and entities
involved in any industrial activities over a public network. In
addition, a digital identity can be expanded to include property,
possessions and objects. Therefore, machines, sensing and
actuating devices, software agents and any other entities
involved in the manufacturing process can be issues a digital
identity. These digital identities can be issued by a
governmental organization in a way like issuing driver’s
licenses, passports, company registrations, and property titles.
This feature had already been under consideration in many
countries and many are working on the methodologies and
logistics of creating, managing and protecting digital identities.
B. Distributed Security
One of the key success factors of blockchain is its ability to
protect the data and transactions recorded in the shared ledger
using a compartmentalized and distributed approach [21]. This
protection is not only done through simple encryptions that hide
and protect individual transactions. It also includes high levels
of replications and chained series of encryptions or digital
signatures that make it impossible to alter any record that has
already been appended to the chain. Every newly added
transaction, after being validated by the participating entities, is
linked with the chain of previous transactions, thus no one
record can be altered in any way. In addition, relying on the
verified digital identities and that each transaction is recorded
with a full agreement among all entities involved, it becomes
practically impossible for any of these entities to later deny
being involved or in agreement [22]. The approach used allows
for better protection of transactions, lower risks of exposure in
case of security breaches, and higher confidence levels in the
validity of the recorded transactions.
C. Smart Contracts
The recording, validation and security features of
blockchain in the addition to the digital identity support enable
what is known as smart contracts [23]. Smart contracts permit
the conducting of credible contracts over a public network
without a third party. A smart contract is trackable, secure and
unalterable. Blockchain-based smart contracts have the
prospective to advance many industrial sectors in different
ways. One of these advancements is by automating agreement
processes between companies and their partners and between
companies and their customers in the Industry 4.0 context. This
will considerably reduce the administrative costs and create a
more efficient model to initiate, negotiate and finalize contracts
without the need to rely on third party registrations or heavy
documentation. Many areas of agreements across the smart
manufacturing value chain can be conducted using smart
contracts. Agreements with suppliers, transportation and
warehousing services providers, distributers and subcontractors
can be negotiated and recorded as smart contracts. These can be
done faster, at lower cost, yet still carry the authenticity and
credibility of regular contracts.
D. Micro-Controls
Another area where blockchain features can positively
impact smart manufacturing is the ability to facilitate micro-
metering, micro-measurements and dynamic adjustments at
fine grain details. The ability to securely record events and
activities without the need for third party confirmations and
external assurances, will increase the amount of recorded data
and activities and will allow organizations to build detailed
ledgers of their activities and processes. These can be easily
analyzed to provide measurements and quality controls at any
level of detail. In addition, it allows for accurate records that
can be easily used as audit trails and evaluation factors of a
manufacturer’s activities, market position, and financial
standing to name a few examples [24]. In smart manufacturing,
this will allow for continuous recording of processes and
activities performed within the smart manufacturing facility
and across the whole value chain. Data on safety incidents for
example can be collected continuously and with fine details in
blockchain. This will guarantee the authenticity of the data,
ensure its validity and create an unalterable record. This data
can then be mined to analyze incidents, implications, responses
and any other information recorded. The analysis will lead to
better understanding of these incidents, the identification of
trends and sources of problems and eventually using this
information to create better safety processes and improve
operations.
IV. MIDDLEWARE APPROACH FOR APPLYING
BLOCKCHAIN FOR INDUSTRY 4.0
In this section, we discuss our approach in integrating
blockchain in a middleware framework to provide solutions for
many Industry 4.0 challenges and to enable smooth
implementation and integration of Industry 4.0 systems. Smart
manufacturing applications usually involve distributed
resources and services available on different technologies such
as manufacturing CPS, cloud manufacturing, fog
manufacturing, and other hardware and software based
systems. These resources and services may belonging to one
large manufacturing firm or multiple related firms that are
linked together to support a desired value-chain. smart
manufacturing applications cannot operate effectively without
a suitable and flexible development and execution environment
supporting their operations, as well as good mechanisms
supporting the integration of all distributed resources and
services. Man4Ware [6] can be used as the supporting
development and execution framework and to provide the
integration mechanisms for these applications. Man4Ware is a
service-oriented middleware (SOM) [25] [26] designed to
develop, execute, and support distributed services for smart
manufacturing applications. It offers the essential services to
provision the development of the proposed model for smart
manufacturing. It can be used to integrate the different
technologies needed for complete smart manufacturing
solutions that include various components like industrial IoT,
manufacturing CPS, fog manufacturing, and cloud
manufacturing as shown in Fig. 2.
0855

Manufacturing Industry 4.0 Applications
Man4Ware
Fog
Manufacturing Other System
Manufacturing
CPS Services Services
Services
Fig. 2. Man4Ware integrates different technologies to enable smart manufacturing
applications.
Man4Ware views all resources in the smart manufacturing
environment including sensors, actuators, and IoT devices as
services that can be requested and deployed by other services
in smart manufacturing applications. For example, it can view
all manufacturing CPS resources in a smart factory as services
with standard interfaces that can be accessed uniformly by other
services and applications. Man4Ware also offers essential
services such as broker, invocation, location-based, and basic
security services. The broker services are responsible for other
IoT, fog computing, and cloud computing services
advertisement, discovery, and registration. There are two kinds
of broker services in Man4Ware: a global broker service
available on the cloud and local broker services offered on each
fog node or local compute nodes. The global broker is used to
cover the whole environment and the local brokers offer fast
brokering services for the local compute and fog nodes they
reside on. The invocation services provide support for local and
remote service calls. Moreover, the main functions of the
security services in Man4Ware are to integrate different
security mechanisms among all local compute and fog nodes,
IoT devices, and cloud systems and confirm that the essential
security measures are applied properly. Different kinds of smart
manufacturing applications can be developed utilizing the
services of Man4Ware along with the application specific
services needed.
Man4Ware is a service-oriented middleware, thus its
capabilities can be easily extended by adding more core
services and creating the capabilities to support additional
advanced applications services. Man4Ware is extended to cover
a key set of blockchain services that are becoming increasingly
useful for smart manufacturing applications, services that
provide blockchain functionality (see Fig. 3). These Man4Ware
services can be integrated to form new advanced services
within these applications. For example, if Man4Ware is to
integrate an application spanning multiple manufacturing firms
to exchange information and perform various shared
transactions, then Man4Ware services will enable exchanging
the data and collaborate to complete he required transactions
correctly and safely. These services can be linked with other
distributed ledger services to build verifiable and immutable
transaction logs. In addition, other integrated blockchain
services related to digital identities can be used to authenticate
these transactions. The distributed ledgers created and
maintained through Man4Ware services can be used as trusted
and traceable records and source for verifying the correctness
of these transactions. Now, smart manufacturing applications
can be built using the available services defined in Man4Ware.
These applications can engage their local broker to perform a
certain transaction with one or more entities integrated with the
application (these may be within the same organization or
Cloud
Manufacturing external) that can provide the needed service. The local broker
Services service will identify and connect the required entities services.
Then, the application will use these services to work with the
entities on negotiating, validating and finalizing the desired
Cloud
transaction. When the transaction is formalized and agreed
upon the blockchain services will append it to the ledger. The
blockchain service in Man4Ware will support the entire process
and encrypt and append the finalized transaction to the chain
and replicate and distribute it among the participating entities.
Man4Ware can also offer services to mine the blockchain to
find specific transactions and support analysis and micro-
control services on the chain’s content for authorized services
in the smart manufacturing applications.
Other smart manufacturing applications can use smart
contracts services to automate negotiation and agreement
processes needed by the applications. Thus, instead of building
detailed codes for such negotiation and agreement, the
blockchain services of Man4Ware can be used for this task. All
finalized contracts are also encrypted and appended to the
blockchain for secure and reliable storage and mining. In
addition, based on the features built into blockchain, all entities
involved will have to accept the smart contract before being
appended and will not be able to modify or deny it later.
Moreover, other blockchain based services can be added to
extend the functionality and offer the applications a wider set
of blockchain services through the same framework. Services
for auditing, micro-measurement, dynamic controls and
pricing, building trust models are examples that can be used by
smart manufacturing applications.
V. DISCUSSION
Integrating service-oriented middleware like Man4Ware
and blockchain capabilities in one platform can provide a
powerful environment for implementing and operating many
smart manufacturing applications that integrate multiple
manufacturing and value chain entities. The features of
Man4Ware provide a flexible and extensible environment to
implement and operate smart manufacturing applications.
While this can form an Internet of Services environment for
smart manufacturing applications, blockchain enriches this
environment with the Internet of Transactions features. This
Internet of Transactions can establish a more secure, trusted,
and controlled environment to build and operate smart
manufacturing applications. Service calls can be associated
with transactions that are authenticated and recorded by
blockchain facilities. These service calls/transactions can
represent different smart manufacturing activities such as
material orders, payments, manufacturing procedures,
machines configuration activities, safety incidents activities,
research and development data, monitoring activities, storage
logs, shipment orders, and energy-related orders.
0856

Maintenance
Logistics Application
Application
Broker Services Invocation Services
Micro-Controls
Smart Contract Services Services
Digital Identity
Authentication Services
Services
Manufacturing CPS Cloud Manufacturing
Fig. 3. Man4Ware services with blockchain capabilities.
This can significantly enhance the development process of
smart manufacturing applications. In addition, it can build new
types of applications to support new business models and
business ideas in smart manufacturing. One of these models is
providing detailed interactive monitoring services for
manufacturing machines to provide smart and cost-effective
maintenance information to prevent long unscheduled
shutdowns for these machines. With blockchain features, the
data collected can be safely shared with authorized entities and
protected from tampering. In addition, the same services can be
augmented with the capabilities to trigger smart contracts for
the required maintenance work and create the necessary
workload, scheduling and payment transactions. Another
example is using blockchain services to safely create a shared
historical record of energy consumption across multiple
facilities and with other similar manufacturing facilities. The
data can be shared as aggregated and anonymized sets to
facilitate large scale energy use analysis across all
manufacturers to detect faults and areas of energy waste.
Man4Ware and possibly more service-oriented middleware
platforms simplify and streamline smart manufacturing
applications, while blockchain helps add value to these
applications. Value gained in terms of security, traceability,
trustworthiness, distribution through the shared ledger. Many
advancements are possible based on the use of these two
technologies. Powerful smart manufacturing applications will
become more feasible to build and deploy based on better cost
effectiveness and higher return to investment. In addition,
blockchain will make it possible to achieve inter-organizational
collaboration as it will help establish trust, validate transactions,
secure data and enforce non-repudiation. All these capabilities
will help new business models appear, create efficient smart
manufacturing processes, support flexibility and agility in
Industry 4.0 (Smart
Manufacturing)
Planning Application
Applications Layer
Real-time
Services
Distributed Ledger
Services
Man4Ware Layer
Distributed Security
Services
Fog Infrastructure Layer
Manufacturing
products development and manufacturing, and create more
adaptive and customized product creations.
VI. CONCLUSION
When the Industry 4.0 vision began to take hold, various
smart manufacturing applications were foreseen to achieve that
vision. Unfortunately, the high complexity of these applications
due to the various working parts make it hard to achieve the
vision. These parts include CPS, robotics, machines, smart
devices, compute nodes, fog and cloud commuting services and
several others. The integration process becomes difficult and
coordination to create a harmonious application becomes hard
to achieve. Furthermore, smart manufacturing applications
usually need to integrate several systems and components that
may not always be owned by a single entity. Thus, sharing data
and securing interactions to protect all parties involved is also
an important issue. Moreover, a lot of interactions between
multiple entities and organizations across the manufacturing
value chain need to be supported adequately to create cost
effective and efficient processes. Middleware solutions and
blockchain features come in as useful method to provide a
development and execution environment to address several of
these difficulties. In this paper, we proposed Man4Ware with
the additional blockchain services. As a service-oriented
middleware, Man4Ware abstracts components, devices and
software functionalities as services accessible to smart
manufacturing applications via the Man4Ware core services. In
addition, the added blockchain services in Man4Ware will
further enhance the environment and facilitate more secure,
traceable and immutable features in smart manufacturing
applications. As a result, developing smart manufacturing
applications aligning with the Industry 4.0 vision with the
support of Man4Ware will create ample opportunities for
advanced and smart features. The next step is to further enhance
0857
the Man4Ware services including the blockchain features to
offer more advanced functionalities and support for smart
capabilities and blockchain features.
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