I don’t understand blockchain enthusiasts. I even spent some time studying the concept and application examples. Most of the time they use private networks removing the concept of distribution, many other times regular database and signature techniques would be cheaper and more practical and anyway these ready made solutions are actually black boxes for the final users because messing around with blockchain would require too much skills… But if you have to trust these black boxes, you could actually just trust any centralized service… I really can’t understand…

And that's the catch. Blockchain has it's use, but it's a pretty niche use case. Most of the times no one needs blockchain

I'm in the final stages of my master's dissertation on the use of blockchain in a manufacturing execution system.

I've created a decentralised application which adds blocks to a chain to record which person has performed each action against products being manufactured, and when they did them. This traceability is essential when working on military, aerospace and healthcare products, as our company does.

The system is designed to be fairly private in the sense that the factory operators are all accessing the system while on site. However, customers/auditors may join the network externally to audit the data

This method is significantly better than a database counterpart just from the fact that a database can.. and does (in my experience in the industry) get fraudulently modified.

I would like to think that blockchain isn't seen as an optional alternative in the future for such systems that require this level of trust in the data, but instead becomes a requirement to pass audits

To add, I wrote every line of code for the sample MES app, blockchain and decentralisation myself, rather than using a black box existing approach. Although this was in part due to the requirement from the university to avoid plagiarism

@drego I’d like to know more about actual solution using blockchains, but honestly if a database gets fraudulently modified I think there’s some sort of problem about permissions and authorized users. And if there’s such a problem I honestly doubt any technology could fix lack of competence/honesty.

@rov3rand0m the way that I see it is a MES (using my example) that uses a database will rely on the end customer or auditing body to trust everyone that has write permissions to the DB. But with blockchain, there is no requirement to trust anybody since it is practically impossible to edit any historical entries, resulting in an unquestionable historical trace of actions.

So if we don't need to trust then surely that's better than just hoping that the company has given the relevant users their correct DB permissions, wouldn't you agree?

Regarding your request for the solution using Blockchains, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the tech so please don't be offended if you know this already. Where a DB may have a TransactionStatuses table which has one entry that gets edited each time a product completes an action, a blockchain approach will instead add an extra block, similar to a record for each new action. Allowing anybody to look back chronologically to its previous states

@drego i wss thinking "why not a simple fucking database", but at the end you are right, manufacturing companies do lie and modify their numbers, modify their QA results and a bunch of crappy practices, I worked in one for a few years.

A blockchain makes sense, but no manufacturing company will use it if they are not pressurered by their customers or the industry itself

@drego Thank you. Maybe I need to think a little bit about this, but your answer is much better than over-enthusiastic stuff I found on the internet and it makes sense to me as a valid use case.

@mundo03 as a Systems Engineer I also see my peers (and have even been asked to myself) modifying values that really shouldn't be touched, it's a shame but people will always try to cover their own backs to help themselves in the short term.. even if it hinders long term improvement opportunities. I'd also like to add that it was my current employer that first mentioned the idea of creating a MES that uses blockchain to me, although this was my only "cool" manager in a company of 800+. Many are stuck in their old ways of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

@rov3rand0m no problem at all, I'm glad I could shed some light at least ☺️ I do get what you mean though, there are a lot of people really trying to push blockchain as the one mega solution for everything, which obviously it is not. However, in many projects, I honestly believe it can be a huge asset

On a side note, I'm hoping to post a link to my project open source after my MSc is completed in a few months, if you're interested in checking it out 😃

@drego that's cool as hell.