Demo: Decentralized Product Lifecycle Management Using Blockchain and Digital Twins

Managing a product throughout its various lifecycle stages is essential for all stakeholders involved. Efficient management is supposed to streamline process, enhance product quality, increase customer satisfaction, and improve profitability. The current architecture faces challenges that impact trust among stakeholders because of its centralized architecture. This paper presents a blockchain-based solution to enhance trust and transparency in product lifecycle management. Using Asset Administration Shell (AAS) as a standardized digital representation, we model and share product digital twins via IPFS. The proposed architecture demonstrates how smart contracts and IPFS enable the creation, sharing, and traceability of digital twins throughout the product lifecycle, fostering collaboration among stakeholders. This is illustrated through the use case of an electric vehicle, where digital twins are created for critical components like the EV battery and tire and enabling tracking across different lifecycle stages. Additionally, we evaluate the implementation for scalability, latency, and cost efficiency.