Blockchains: A Conceptual Assessment from a Product Lifecycle Implementation Perspective

Abstract

PLM systems are heavily distributed collaborative platforms resulting in multiple challenges related to the integrity and reliability of the exchanged information. Such issues are usually difficult to address using traditional software solutions. However, since the introduction of blockchains, such challenges are currently being effectively addressed. On the one hand, traditional PLM systems design philosophy was mainly about centralized proprietary systems that have difficulty to cope with new distributed and open environments imposed by the extensive use of IoT platforms and other Industry 4.0 tools. On the other hand, blockchains address data integrity issues by design, and mitigate some of the trust concerns found in collaborative platforms. Through this paper, we study and evaluate the integration of blockchain technology with PLM systems highlighting the different advantages, challenges, and issues that this integration might induce. 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.