Blockchain-Enabled Information as a Service (IaaS) for Configuration Tracking and Control of Smart Manufacturing Systems

Configuration data in smart manufacturing systems must be propagated and verified almost as quickly as mechanical re-tooling occurs, yet conventional MES platforms offer neither tamper-evident provenance nor cross-vendor trust at such speeds. This paper proposes a blockchain-enabled Information-as-a-Service (IaaS) framework that records cryptographic fingerprints of every PLC program, robot trajectory, and Genetic Bill of Material and Operations (GBOMO) -based product-variant descriptor on a permissioned ledger, while retaining the associated payloads in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for scalable storage. A domain-specific Proof-of-Configuration (PoC) consensus replaces compute-intensive mining with two lightweight risk metrics—structural entropy and update frequency. Complementary deployment and rollback protocols ensure that validated artefacts are atomically applied across all stations or automatically quarantined. The resulting architecture furnishes a practical basis for secure, agile configuration governance, supporting both real-time digital-twin synchronization and the emergence of high-skill roles in configuration assurance and analytics.