Blockchain for forming technology - tamper-proof exchange of production data

An increasingly connected production in the sense of Industry 4.0 allows completely new possibilities in regard to improved and more efficient production and higher product quality. But a key factor to Industry 4.0 is a consistent data flow along the production chain. However, the exchange of data, especially between companies, still is a major obstacle to overcome in order to achieve the aforementioned advantages. Currently, there are increasing efforts to record and analyse data. But there is a lack of a holistic system to handle data, therefore commonly company databases or other inefficient methods are used. These solutions are limited with regard to data exchange since the ownership of data cannot be proven, production data has no unforgeable timestamp, which in turn hinders the generation of complete production history from the final product (e.g., car door) back to the semi-finished product (e.g., steel sheet). As a result, there is insufficient to no data exchange along the production chain. In order to solve these problems blockchain is a promising approach. At the Institute of Manufacturing Technology, an operational blockchain system was developed and implemented using standard production machines. With the combination of a quarto rolling mill and a 400t - press, representing the sheet metal supplier and a forming company, respectively, the typical process chain of sheet metal processing is represented, which allows the detailed investigation of the established blockchain in this field of application. Within this contribution, the conceptual approach of a blockchain system for forming technology will be presented. The nature and the classification of occurring data throughout the production chain will be addressed.