Supporting connected manufacturing in the automotive domain using Blockchain

Industrial production is undergoing a profound transformation phase. It has become commonplace to refer to this phase as Industry 4.0. The technologies involved are innovative and the basic plan that represents the thrust of transformation is the concept of automation. Even the automotive industry is not an exception: in addition of the yet already consolidated mass production of automobile components as mature legacy of third industrial revolution, it is evolving to develop the capability specific replacement parts required on demand only when needed. This thesis work consists in the analysis and study of the already existing industrial additive manufacturing process and then propose a new production system capable of integrate two of the leading technology of the Industry 4.0: blockchain technology and additive manufacturing. The goal of the final project was therefore to understand how a process of additive manufacturing could be interwoven with blockchain technology in order to achieve an automated process that satisfies the properties of traceability, repeatability, transparency and immutability of the information that is involved in the production process. Subsequently the study and design of an architecture in which the company that requires the production of a piece and the manufacturer responsible for producing it are involved. A first description and analysis of the technologies involved in this work is presented in the introductory part of this dissertation in two distinct parts: additive manufacturing and blockchain. In the first part, a study and analysis of additive manufacturing processes for the production of metal components is presented. The common print process currently used in most industries is described and an automated cycle is proposed that takes into account many aspects of additive manufacturing: [...] so that they can be useful for possible corrections of printing problems in subsequent productions. The second part includes firstly the analysis on the different blockchain technologies (permissioned / permissionless) currently present and secondly an innovative system is proposed to integrate these two technologies in order to satisfy the project goals. The approach is composed in two steps. The former has a more theoretical and organizational character: a service-oriented architecture is studied and proposed [...]. In general, this architecture proposes an automatic system for the replacement of faulty automotive components [...]. The second part instead has a more practical and demonstrative character: a software prototype based on a simplified version of this architecture has been designed and developed. In this prototype the main characteristics for the minimum functioning of the proposed system are involved. The main problems, advantages and drawbacks are discussed in the final part of this work that can be obtained in the adoption of this system are listed, and lastly of this dissertation, possible implementational alternatives are presented to achieve the goals set by the main architecture and the advantages that could derive from it. The results of this work mainly demonstrate the advantages deriving from the adoption of blockchain technology and proposes an architecture that allows to achieve the automation objectives and the properties required by the customer company.