Blockchain for Economy of Scale in Wind Industry: A Demo Case

Abstract

This paper summarizes the key findings of a qualitative study based on feedbacks of experts from the wind industry followed by a demo case of blockchain technology. This study includes investigation on mapping of supply chain and commodity products related end-to-end life cycle associated data and operational events. Furthermore, identification and blueprinting of the requirements have been pursued for enabling traceability at various stages of their life cycle utilizing blockchain. In this study context, blockchain offers digital traceability of operational events and associated data sharing with complete immutability, ownership, confidentiality, trust, and transparency across distributed supply chain which comprises of multiple stakeholders. In addition, digital technology intervention like IoT has been leveraged to support quality of operations in quantitative manner through real time data driven digitized operations. Thereby, providing economy of scale over operations execution on commodity products in wind industry. This study has focused only on bolts and fasteners associated commodity products and related supply chain. However, this provides a steppingstone foundation for future which can be scaled and mapped to any other commodity product and related supply chain in wind industry. Finally, this study also presents a demonstrator developed in a controlled lab environment to demystify the use of blockchain technology in related manufacturing and supply chain setups of the wind industry.