Manufacturing Blockchain of Things for the Configuration of a Data- and Knowledge-Driven Digital Twin Manufacturing Cell

• Published in: IEEE internet of things journal Vol. 7; no. 12; pp. 11884 - 11894
• Main Authors: Zhang, Chao, Zhou, Guanghui, Li, Han, Cao, Yan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.12.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Blockchain; Computer architecture; Configurations; Cryptography; Digital twins; Encryption; Fault tolerance; Industrial applications; Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT); Industry 4.0; Industry 40; intelligent manufacturing system (IMS); Intelligent manufacturing systems; Internet of Things; Manufacturing; manufacturing blockchain of things (MBCoT); Manufacturing processes; Network latency; Security; Throughput
• ISSN: 2327-4662; 2327-4662
• DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2020.3005729

Configuring intelligent manufacturing systems (IMSs) is significant for manufacturing enterprises to take a step toward Industry 4.0. However, most current IMS is configured based on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) with a centralized architecture, which results in poor flexibility to handle manufacturing disturbances and limits capacity to support security solutions. To solve the above issues, this article combines IIoT with the permissioned blockchain and proposes a novel manufacturing blockchain of things (MBCoT) architecture for the configuration of a secure, traceable, and decentralized IMS. Then, hardware infrastructures and software-defined components of MBCoT are designed to provide an insight into the industrial implementation of IMS. Furthermore, the consensus-oriented transaction logic of MBCoT is presented based on a crash fault-tolerant protocol, which empowers MBCoT with a strong but resource-efficient encryption mechanism to support the autonomous manufacturing process. Finally, the implementation of an MBCoT prototype system and its application examples justify that the proposed approach is practical and sound. The evaluation experiment demonstrates that MBCoT equips IMS with a secure, traceable, stable, and decentralized operating environment while achieving competitive throughput and latency performance.