Blockchain applications of manufacturing systems: A survey

In recent years, future manufacturing systems following a vision of Industry 4.0 has been accelerated in order to enable more personalized, smart, and sustainable production. However, unsolved security challenges from their enlarged accessibility and connectivity have delayed realizing such systems. To address the emerging issues, the blockchain technology can be adopted to utilize its inherent generic security capabilities. However, research regarding the use of blockchain in manufacturing systems has only begun in the past few years while their research findings have been disseminated through a wide range of different outlets. This paper presents a literature review covering how manufacturing systems can adopt the blockchain technology while maintaining their production capacity, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. In addition to the survey, five categories of manufacturing systems striving to achieve the goal of Industry 4.0 are defined to provide a system model-based analysis. Also, a technology roadmap—that visualizes the chronological history of the technology—has been adopted to present the research trend and identify opportunities for future studies.