The industrial internet of things is expected to attract significant investment to the industry. In this new environment, blockchain presents immediate potential in industrial IoT applications, offering several benefits to industrial cyber-physical systems. However, works in the blockchain literature target environments that do not meet the reality of the factory and do not assess the impact of the blockchain on industrial process requirements. Thus, this chapter presents an investigation of the evolution of industrial process automation systems and blockchain-based applications in the horizontal and vertical integration of the various systems in a supply chain and factories. In addition, through an investigation of experimental work, this work presents issues and challenges to be faced for the application of blockchain in industrial processes. Evaluations and discussions are mainly focused on aspects of real-time systems in machine-to-machine communication of industrial processes.