A framework of credit assurance mechanism for manufacturing services under social manufacturing context

Increasing production personalization demand requires manufacturing enterprises to gain higher flexibility and faster market response. Enterprises have to share their manufacturing resources and cooperate with each other to win out in the fierce market competition. Under the circumstances, Social Manufacturing (SocialM) mode is proposed. In this mode, Social Manufacturing Network (SMN) integrates distributed Socialized Manufacturing Resources (SMRs) to provide more precise and professional service for customers. As a decentralized network, SMN cannot ensure the cross-enterprise collaborations because there is no trusted third party as supervisor. In this paper, a blockchain-based Production Credit Mechanism (PCM) for manufacturing services is put forward to regulate the cross-enterprise collaborations among SMRs. The frame and concept of PCM are firstly given, followed by four key enabling technologies supporting the implementation of the mechanism. It is expected that the PCM proposed in this paper will provide a possible way to normalize and regulate cross-enterprise collaborations under social manufacturing mode.