Blockchain Technology for Industry 4.0

Homo sapiens have become the leading force of the earth by their ability of transformations. Initial hunter-gatherers transformed to agriculture-oriented small groups which finally led to early of civilizations. Civilizations produced more complex social human lives in the forms of cities and states. In distinct geographical areas, humans discovered new tools and methods to make their lives better. In that search for “effectiveness”, humans tended to spend less (force, money or time) but achieve more. At the end of thousand years of this tendency, 18th century became the witness of early industrial revolution efforts. It was defined as a revolution due to its game-breaker or disruptive nature. Besides, it was associated with the term industry, since the source of power shifted from humans to different tools or machines. From that time to the current date, many scholars divide that timeline into four time-zones by considering the most disruptive technology of the time. In that manner, the first industrial revolution has linked to steam engines (using the power of water). The second revolution has associated to the electricity for assembly lines and mass production. The third revolution has been connected to computer technologies forming automation and lastly the fourth industrial revolution has been named with its capacity for cyber-physical system development with the application of advanced technologies. In those four revolutions, we can realize two essential points; the latter revolution has been stemming from the advancements in former revolution and the total time of revolution has becoming shorter. Therefore, it is clear that the effects of Industry 4.0 revolution will be widespread in public very soon. Among all the other high level technologies, blockchain technology which could be perceived as one of the most complicated and ultimate level of Industry 4.0 implementations could be listed as the last but not the least historical advancements for human beings.

As a consequence of the upcoming fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0 (Industry 4.0), new disruptive technologies are being considered to be incorporated in the factory environment. One of these solutions are the Blockchain, which aims to integrate heterogeneous systems, manage commercial transactions and foster the assets’ traceability. Thus, this technology contributes to create a whole optimized supply chain that can impact in the global market. This chapter exposes the convergence of Blockchain and Industry 4.0. In this way, academical, commercial, and governmental initiatives are explored to present examples of what is currently being proposed, fostered and developed. In addition, a critical analysis covers the aspects of how these technologies can be synergically and efficiently integrated in a future society and industrial environment.

Nowadays data plays a vital role in our lives so, it should not go under negative influence other than computer connoisseur else it can lead to detrimental consequences.

Existing blockchain and smart contract development ecosystems do not support to design, develop, and verify secure smart contracts before deploying them. Recent attacks (see DAO hack [5]) on insecure smart contracts have caused a lot of financial loss—to avoid such issues in the future, we need better methods for creating secure smart contracts before deploying them in a blockchain. In this chapter, we present a method and a prototype tool to generate secure smart contracts based on Petri Nets. Our method allows to design and generate a secure smart contract template that can be deployed on a supported blockchain platform (e.g. Ethereum) with very little additional effort. One of the main advantages that our method brings into the smart contract development ecosystem is introducing a formal way to visually model, simulate, and verify business logic/workflows prior to the smart contract code generation. Modeling the smart contracts via Petri Nets helps the developers to minimize the logical errors—by verifying certain Petri Net properties such as deadlocks—during the modeling stage itself. Furthermore, our approach presents a technology-independent way to import and export the modeled use-case logic which can be translated into different smart contract language later.

Internet of Things (IoT) has already widely adopted for industrial applications in tasks such as automation, diagnostics, and management of industrial machines and the processes inherent in the formation of supply chains. Such devices have unique characteristics, such as reduced processing and memory, low bandwidth for data transmission and data collection, and limited autonomy, as they are usually battery-powered.

Crowdfunding has disrupted the way of financing and allowed the startups to raise funds without much hustle and bureaucracy. In the existing model, Pool of people contribute small amounts of money towards a project or cause and expect some financial or non-financial returns. A crowdfunding platform takes a commission and matches the needs and expectations of funders and fundraisers. Blockchain technology is a decentralized ledger, more efficient, safe and tamper-proof system of nodes in connection. Introduction of blockchain in crowdfunding will make it more reliable, transparent, trusted, decentralized, cost-efficient and convenient. A crowdfunding platform which was acting as an intermediary before will only provide the technology and name is its own crypto-currency which will act as a medium of transaction and exchange. Fundraisers will generate their own currency and everyone on the network will be notified about the project. Funders will buy this crypto-currency to claim its share in the project and can withdraw any time by selling the currency and losing the share in a project or transferring it to another project. Blockchain can further improve this unique and contemporary way of raising funds by making out more reliable and transparent.

Revolutions in technology in past few decades have generated complete transformations in natural orthodox processes owned by industry, education and healthcare, disrupting work flow processes and generating out of box solutions and processes. Industry 4.0 has increased the demand for revolutionary changes in education and pedagogical approach in education. Engineering education is directly affected by the revolutionary demand of industry. Disruptive technology has directly affected all the core branches: Mechanical, electrical, electronics, civil engineering. Exponentially evolving technological innovations are described as Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous and to make students industry ready, changes in engineering curriculum are required. The current work is sincere effort to analyze the issues and challenges required in all branches of engineering for industry 4.0. The objective of the work is to analyze and identify the major disruptive technology with their influential effect on core engineering branches. The work also discusses the necessary changes required to incorporate concept of engineering 4.0.

The next definitive step into the future is expected to involve a shift towards a fully automated environment that utilizes exponential technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Sensor Networks and Blockchain paradigms. We are immersed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and interact with one another, and with technology. Industry 4.0 is an emerging era of connectivity and interaction among parts, machines and humans that have the potential to create enormous production and efficiency dividends, in addition to improvements in the quality of life and sustainable environmental outcomes. The Healthcare Industry is in the process of adopting technologies that allow digitization of health records and automation of various plausible clinical procedures. The field has undergone an evolution of its own, and is now standing at Healthcare Version 3.0, the extension of Web 3.0, that involves greater transparency of healthcare data to individuals, personalized to optimize their experience with the interface. The amalgamation of the two revolutions to realise the new era of Health 4.0, is where the emerging Blockchain Technology could play a major role. The need for interoperability across clinical departments within the same hospital, the necessity of updated set of records for reference across multiple healthcare facilities, and the exigency of trusted and transparent documentation of individual health data, urge the use of Blockchain concepts in our attempt to transform healthcare services. This chapter explores the transition of the Healthcare Industry, the drawbacks of previous versions, and the opportunities of Blockchain concepts that would aid the medical field in keeping up with Industry 4.0.