Towards safe service ecosystems for production for value networks and manufacturing monitoring

Abstract

In a global sales market with networked production steps and increasing complex machine tools, scaling service ecosystems for production provide an adequate solution for handling the generated data. The existing sensor equipment at current and the extension possibility by the System-of-Systems approach for existing machine tools can offer value-added services by the smart handling of production-related data. It is important to make these data validatable and exchangeable, taking into account to different protection goals. The trust of the individual actors in such a volatile value chain and the different (partly cross-border) value creation partners play an important role. The participation of a large number of these actors creates an attractive overall system (ecosystem) with lots of services and network effects. Concerning data security there are numerous aspects, which have not been adequately answered or taken into account in the use of a service ecosystem in the production environment. The paper discusses a distributed ecosystem for production on a distributed ledger-based service ecosystem, in which services can be mapped in the machine tool environment (e.g. calibration). This technology can be used for secure data exchange in order to discuss traceability and unchangeability of data while maintaining data sovereignty.

Secure data storage and service automation for cyber physical production systems through distributed ledger technologies

“…Smart contracts are an essential component of distributed ledger technology for process automation and can be used within a blockchain. [18]. This is a functional extension of the distributed ledger technology, which, according to Szabo [19], forms the basis for a digital, mediation-free equivalent of conventional contracts.…”