InfraTrac secures physical assets via SAP Blockchain
Ever endure endless delays for a flight that can’t take off until a repair part is delivered planeside? Or have to reschedule an appliance repair when the replacement item wasn’t on the tech’s truck? Or found what you needed on the store shelf, only to realize its sell-by date has passed? Supply chains affect us all… and there is room for improvement.
With new developments in digital manufacturing, the supply chain landscape is changing rapidly. You can curb the time and distance between supply and demand. With 3D printing, you can stock an enormous library of part designs, along with some printers and print materials, in a much smaller depot, and print parts as needed, close to the customer.
All of this flexibility – anybody can print anything! – raises important security issues. How can we be sure that distributed libraries are secure? Certain that a proprietary design hasn’t been compromised? Confident that a hole-in-the-middle knock-off isn’t substituted for the genuine part?
Blockchain helps solve the security problem. This is a different use of blockchain from Bitcoin, where a key advantage is that no one, no government or authority, is in charge. Blockchain for supply chain security benefits from central management by a trusted authority. Tracking physical assets using blockchain is a virtual, digital process: a representation of the asset is tracked.
Tracking physical objects is important, to protect intellectual property as well as for inventory management. We want to be sure that aircraft parts are genuine, whether we are Airbus or Boeing, the airline, or an impatient, but safety-conscious, passenger.
SAP is collaborating with major industry players to leverage blockchain to address supply chain security across industries, from pharmaceuticals to 3D printing. Trust is a key element. For distributed manufacturing, manufacturers can build on 3D printing’s advantages: lightweight, complex parts, delivered ever more quickly, with the assurance that the design is protected and production is vetted.
Analysts have pointed out one additional element necessary to protect physical assets in blockchain: some way to track the tangible object itself, not just its label, code, package, or digital twin (Gartner “Blockchain Fundamentals for Supply Chain” 23 February 2018; Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, The Truth Machine, St. Martin’s Press 2018).
Not only can anyone print anything, a counterfeit part maker with a 3D scanner can make a bogus version that seems real, but performs badly, with substandard materials, sloppy tolerances, or internal voids. And that bad actor does not even have to steal an official design or buy expensive equipment to make that copy: 3D scanning can now be done via smartphone.
Sticking a tag on the package or the outside of the asset is not an option with additive manufacturing. In the case of 3D printed spare parts, there is no package, and a stuck-on tag might interfere with functionality. Successful tagging for physical asset tracking in additive manufacturing must be integrated into the essence of the printed object itself.
For the blockchain model to protect physical assets in the supply chain, some level of substantive feedback is necessary. The blockchain needs to be able to query physical objects and get some kind of “I’m ok! You can trust me!” response, without tags that can be spoofed with a scanner or interfere with function. InfraTrac has partnered with SAP to embed chemical fingerprinting right into objects, to provide that security. InfraTrac’s taggants are hidden inside, e.g. as a spot layered into the 3D print as it is made. These covert tags can be detected in an instant with an off-the-shelf, pocket-sized spectrometer, the same technology that automatically sorts different types of plastic in the recycling stream to make fluffy polyester fleece and durable high-density polyethylene park benches.
SAP’s blockchain manages the chemical information as well, maintaining a secure ledger with the spectrometer’s “I’m ok!” matches, and alerting quality controllers when printed parts are suspect. We want our instant parts, balanced with security. So you can be sure those aircraft are safe, truck parts are secure, medical implants are genuine, and whatever advanced manufacturing brings next actually makes our lives better.