A research project with the AI lab Fetch.ai is investigating how autonomous software agents can optimise the supply chain in manufacturing. The idea is that greater autonomy in manufacturing will enable a faster response to the market’s requirements and allow the customer to place personalised, tailor-made orders.
At the moment, capacity usage is often uneven between systems, as the production is always subject to fluctuations in demand. This is where decentralised manufacturing marketplaces come in. Producers and suppliers offer up capacity that they are not using for short periods and can use spare capacity from other companies for their own orders.
As part of the research project, Festo is using the agent-based approach from Fetch.ai to achieve greater autonomy in manufacturing. The manufacturing marketplace is managed using blockchain technology. A blockchain makes it possible to transfer information in a tamper-proof process using a decentralised database used by many participants. Blockchains are thus secure directories updated in real time, in which digital transactions can be reliably documented in a way that can be traced by the participants.
"The blockchain technology enables us to track orders on the manufacturing marketplace and ensure that the network participants do not obtain any manufacturing secrets. Payments in cryptocurrency can also be made directly and securely via the blockchain," explains Eduard Grün, Blockchain Development Lead at Festo.