Blockchain: From Industry 4.0 to the Machine Economy

Abstract

The extreme automation of our factories is necessary in order to face the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This new industrial paradigm will force our industries to manufacture much shorter and customized series at increasingly competitive prices, even tackling the manufacture of thousands of different configurations of a single base product. In order to achieve this, our production processes must have a flexibility in their configuration that has never been imagined before. This flexibility and ability to adapt automatically to demand are the essence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and are part of the Western strategy to recover an industrial sector increasingly threatened by the Eastern production of large series at really competitive prices. Based on our participation in more than a dozen proofs of concept in the automotive, aeronautics, agri-food, or energy sectors, we describe the scenarios in which blockchain technology brings the greatest benefits to Industry 4.0. After finishing different experimentations, we carried out an in-depth analysis of the true added value of blockchain in the industry and contrasted our conclusions through interviews with more than 20 people in charge of innovation from different industries. As a result, we have obtained the principal four values of blockchain technology applied to Industry 4.0.

Blockchain Technology: The Role of Integrated Reverse Supply Chain Networks in Sustainability

“…The ninth factor is machine economy or Machine-to -Machine (M2M) as a new portfolio in linking a sharing economy to the IoT (George et al 2019;Rehman et al, 2021). It reflects the link between decentralisation and tokenisation, via BCT, along the supply chain to share information via machines and operate with tokens among actors (Van der Aalst et al 2018;Lage 2019).…”

Real Business Applications and Investments in Blockchain Technology

“…The Machine-to-Machine (M2M) transactions and particularly the Machine Economy, or M2M Economy, is a new paradigm that emerges by transferring the sharing economy to the IoT [65]. Thanks to the capability of decentralization and tokenization of assets and services of blockchain, the Machine Economy allows the creation of a new sharing economy among the machines themselves; putting in as value their data/services in this ecosystem, and operating in an autonomous way with tokens [66].…”

Endüstri 4.0 ın Lojistik Sektörüne Uygulanması: Lojistik 4.0

“…Üretim süreçlerinin konfigürasyonundaki esneklik ve talebe otomatik olarak uyum sağlama yeteneği, dördüncü sanayi devriminin özüdür (Lage, 2019). Birbirinden farklı verileri yakalamak, güvenli bir şekilde iletmek ve analiz etmek, dinamik ve sürekli olarak yeni optimizasyon süreçlerini tetikleyen rehberli kararlar almak için esastır.…”