3D printing, or as the manufacturing industry prefers to call it ‘additive manufacturing’, is used to build critical industrial parts including for the aviation or power generation industries. It’s hard to overstate the importance of using the correct design version or the right quality of metallic components. Hence GE has created a blockchain to manage the supply chain for the additive manufacturing process, one that it says is secure enough for the high-performance world of quantum computing.
“We can create networks that allow for fine-grain control of materials flows, data, intellectual property and identity along the entire additive digital thread,” said Benjamin Beckmann, GE Research’s Blockchain Leader. “The goal here is to provide security for the entire additive process from powder to print.”
Some of the parts that GE builds use highly reactive metallic powders which have a limited shelf life. This is one example of the importance of efficiently managing the supply chain process for additive manufacturing.
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