An Architecture for Digital Processes in Manufacturing with Blockchain, Docker and Cloud Storage

The Blockchain is one of the last decade emerging technologies in software architectures. Its nature of a distributed ledger database allowing verifiable and tamper-proof transactions between untrusted parties makes it suitable for a vast class of domains concerning business processes, including Cloud Manufacturing, a new paradigm for the manufacturing industry based on cloud technologies, for which decentralization and security are key factors. However, existing solutions are still weak in terms of collaboration in providing and consuming heterogeneous services in the Cloud, therefore a standard framework is necessary to overcome this limit. In this paper, we suggest an architecture for consuming digital processes in a manufacturing environment, based on Blockchain and Smart Contracts. Our primary contribution is the integration of Blockchain with two other popular technologies: Docker, a highly portable and scalable container-based platform to run applications, and Cloud Storage. In this system, the logic of a single process is defined by the owner in a self-contained Docker image, whose digest is safely stored in the chain, while input and output files can be stored in a traditional cloud storage service. On each new consumer request, the best runner node is selected through the solution of a simple task assignment problem with a deep learning approach.