Manufacturing and Blockchain: Prime Time Is Yet to Come

Blockchain technology, with its decentralized, consensus-based approach to proving the veracity of each users claims and statements, offers a promising solution - with the added bonus that it might also foster a more equitable world.

Blockchain technology seeks to address these problems via a common data architecture that lets non-trusting parties more securely share information.

In a related field, blockchain systems could also enhance predictive analytics, by which firms can collect data, model it, generate statistics, and then use those statistics to make data-driven business decisions.

The jury is still out on whether blockchain technology actually is the fix it promises.

Blockchain advocates talk enthusiastically about reducing waste, increasing efficiency and providing greater control over supply chains, all because the technology can boost business partners' capacity and willingness to share information.

Paradoxically, although a blockchain could make information-sharing much easier across such a complex set of actors, overcoming the trust challenges across so many parties makes it hard to implement the technology in the first place.

If speed is a greater priority than any problem of mistrust in the database manager, a blockchain may not be the best fit, at least within the technology's current state of development.

Still, as the cryptographic layer advances, with new "Off-chain" solutions such as the Lightning Network promising to greatly improve transaction speed, processing capacity and cost-effectiveness, and as new IoT solutions improve the security and speed of machine-to-machine communications, blockchain solutions will become increasingly more viable.

Separately, A 2015 World Economic Forum Report stated that approximately 10 percent of GDP will be stored on blockchain technologies by 2025.

What we can say is that widespread adoption of blockchain ledgers could have widespread benefits for the global economy, especially if it helps establish new standards in trade and manufacturing.