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Unknowingly, the blockchain has been developed for nearly 10 years, but even now some people still question that the blockchain has no practical application at present, but on the contrary, with the technology accumulation and industry exploration in the past few years, the blockchain It has quietly taken root in some industries...
The column of Blockchain Application Cases is intended to explore the real implementation of the blockchain through some specific cases of the combination of the blockchain and the real industry, and to inspire enterprises or blockchain practitioners.
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Column introduction
Unknowingly, the blockchain has been developed for nearly 10 years, but even now some people still question that the blockchain has no practical application at present, but on the contrary, with the technology accumulation and industry exploration in the past few years, the blockchain It has quietly taken root in some industries...
The column of Blockchain Application Cases is intended to explore the real implementation of the blockchain through some specific cases of the combination of the blockchain and the real industry, and to inspire enterprises or blockchain practitioners.
This article is Dr. Andre, the person in charge of blockchain technology at BMW Group, Germany. Taking the current actual use of BMW cars as an example, he analyzes the application of blockchain technology in the automotive industry. The blockchain framework he cooperates with Amazon reveals to us. After understanding the real magical effect of ledger technology (a type of blockchain technology), perhaps there will be unexpected gains after reading it. Enjoy as follows:
In this article, we discuss some of the reasons why we believe blockchain and related ledger technologies are critical to enabling the next-generation automotive value chain, and several of the initiatives we are taking to make this happen.
Immutable, verifiable and trustworthy data is an essential part of business ecosystems, and ledger technology provides fundamental trust across organizations, including trust in processes, products and services. By using cloud technologies such as those provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), partners in a business ecosystem can easily collaborate and quickly establish a scalable infrastructure.
Of particular importance to the ecosystem is having trusted and secure data provided by services such as the Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (Amazon QLDB), which ensures critical data is verifiable and tamper-proof. The serverless nature of Amazon QLDB allows us to innovate and scale faster than if we managed the underlying ledger technology ourselves, and data stored in Amazon QLDB can be further integrated with decentralized ledger systems.
Ledger technology enables exciting new business models, especially in complex value chains such as the automotive industry. Here, there are many different teams working together, all of which require trusted access to information. From end-to-end data pipeline, encrypted ledger technology can establish trust at every stage. They also ensure that data can be verified and audited even when multiple organizations and partners are involved.
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Track parts in complex supply chains
The supply chain is one of the key areas where we are applying blockchain technology to address the challenge of trusted data exchange. Our core competency is organized around automotive manufacturing, which requires working with a complex network of suppliers and intermediaries. Unfortunately, international trade has not quite caught up with the digital age, and manual and paper handling is still fairly common, even more so with Excel spreadsheets and email. Like us, these methods are inefficient when dealing with 12,000 suppliers in more than 70 countries.
The hope is to use ledger technology to automate cross-organizational processes, ultimately reducing paper and email usage and increasing trust.
Although the BMW Group has one of the most complex supply chains in the world, big visibility is always valuable, especially when it comes to production issues. With PartChain, we can see a part of the information being created in the blockchain even before the part reaches the BMW Group. This provides us with a layer of assurance that we can precisely trace the provenance of a part with immutable and verifiable data much faster than we can search for it in someones email account or file share, even if quality questions, and can also help us respond more quickly.
These capabilities will become even more important as software-defined vehicles become an everyday reality in the automotive industry. Tracking software versions and changes will be necessary as each new software version will constitute a new version of the car. This complexity requires the ability to trust and verify data at every step of the process, as well as a high level of automation, since it would be impossible to track the current status of each vehicle in a spreadsheet.
Today, PartChain is a simple tracking system using Hyperledger Fabric, in the future, a flexible data model will allow us to incorporate more complex information. Ultimately, we envision the ability to automate logistics, customs, import and export, and trade processes. Achieving these goals requires our ability to integrate critical internal operational data with other ecosystems, and we are working to encourage industry-wide adoption of standards that will facilitate this type of advanced automation and privacy-enabled data sharing.
Our PartChain solution includes the enterprise features required to build a blockchain environment, and the solution is designed in a cloud-agnostic manner, giving our partners the flexibility to choose their preferred cloud provider. We have our own ID management system which integrates AWS local database based on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
Cross-industry cooperation
The BMW Group leads and participates in some standardization initiatives, such as the supply chain working group associated with the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI). MOBI is a not-for-profit consortium that works with businesses, governments and NGOs to promote standards building in the mobile industry and accelerate the adoption of blockchain, distributed ledger and other related technologies.
We are also working with MOBI to improve data security and privacy. We hope to overcome privacy challenges by using technologies such as distributed, self-governing identity. By enabling more control and ownership of data, we will be able to use that data more effectively while still preserving privacy and meeting compliance requirements.
One of our biggest focuses in this area is using self-sovereign identities to manage data in a more efficient and private manner. We envision a future where every vehicle on the planet will be able to interact using autonomous technology, enabling car owners to seamlessly engage and use services.
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Enhance applications with trusted vehicle data
While verifiability and immutability are required, we dont need the decentralization that traditional blockchains provide, and AmazonQLDB is a perfect fit for this scenario, allowing us to build producible and scalable prototypes without worrying about managing distributed Database complexity.
In an internal pilot, we developed a vehicle data logging system based on Amazon QLDB. In this recording, the data was captured via the mobiles connectivity module, which communicates with the BMW Group backend via cellular service. With Amazon QLDB, the application can securely issue verifiable credentials that provide the application with underlying information such as authentication data, vehicle registration, and more.
The ability to make claims using tamper-proof and verifiable data sets us apart from other vehicle data systems, in particular, we ensure that the original data of the vehicle is not lost, or altered and deleted. Any potential data conversions are recorded in the archives and can be viewed at any time thereafter via password authentication.
An open standard is critical to supporting broad adoption and value presentation, which is why we designed our solution to be interoperable with MOBIVehicle ID.
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AWS and the Cloud Computing Ledger
