Smart Contract Powered Framework for the Next Generation Industry 4.0 Business Model

Blockchain stands as a crucial technology capable of enhancing transparency, security, and efficiency within various sectors. Particularly in Industry 4.0, blockchains can be employed to monitor the movement of goods and materials across the supply chain, ensuring data integrity, transparency, immutability, accountability, and industrial process interoperability. Industry 4.0 companies must interact with various external players, which often requires collaborations and partnerships to access new technologies, shared data and analytics, and required resources for their processes. However, current business process management in the industry is mostly centralized, untraceable, unreliable and lacks automation. Smart contracts hold the potential to tackle these concerns by offering a remarkable level of automation, transparency, and security while also aiding in regulatory compliance. However, the adoption of smart contracts in Industry 4.0 is still limited due to various obstacles. The challenges facing the deployment of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in Industry 4.0 are multifaceted, encompassing issues such as interoperability across different blockchain systems, scalability and performance constraints, limitations on ensuring data privacy, difficulties in accessing external data sources, and the significant transaction costs often associated with executing smart contracts. To tackle these obstacles comprehensively, we advocate for the development of an interoperable consortium blockchain framework tailored to meet the versatile business processes required by Industry 4.0 enterprises or groups. This proposed architecture, distinct from any specific internal system, incorporates private channels and ensures secure access to external data, thus addressing broader interoperability concerns beyond just smart contracts. Our goal is to establish a comprehensive DLT framework that assures data integrity and traceability throughout its lifecycle, from creation and processing to its final utilization for business insights. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated through its application in a real-world industrial scenario, undertaken in partnership with Fagor Automation, a global leader in the industrial sector.