European blockchain interface company RIDDLE&CODE and digital identity firm S1Seven recently partnered to build a blockchain-based notarization service for metal certificates that provide a product with a digital, tamper-proof identity and traces each step of its journey from raw material to final application.

“S1Seven is a technology pioneer awarded for its innovation within the metal industry,” said Stefan Gruell, S1Seven’s CEO. “Partnering with RIDDLE&CODE is exactly what we need to generate industry-leading technology products.”

Digital Identity in the Metal Industry

Annually, 500 steel production sites and 500,000 metal processing companies exchange around 100 million paper certificates to meet regulatory requirements for material quality documentation. While more machines are being connected to the internet, these documents remain paper-based and non-machine readable, which causes an increase in opportunities for fraud and negligence.

The new service from RIDDLE&CODE and S1Seven allows manufacturers to replace hard copy documents with immutably stored digital records, helping to address traceability within the fragmented metal industry. This will allow manufacturers to become more efficient and competitive on their road to Industry 4.0.

European regulations today already specify the types of inspection certificates that must be provided to each order for supply of metal products to prove conformity with the terms of the order and the relevant standards. These contain technical data on the product and the measurement results of the tests prescribed for the respective product. In all subsequent stages of further processing, these test certificates are a central component of quality assurance. Rising safety standards and increasing division of labour resulting in globally fragmented supply chains also lead to a significant increase in the number of these certificates to be exchanged.

“At this stage, our technology enables us to replace today’s paper certificates with traceable and tamper-proof digital records and the platform for an efficient exchange,” says Gruell. “In this way, the certificates information like product origin, account and industry standards, as well as information about product properties…This data is of increasing importance to be used for adaptive process control in modern manufacturing equipment.”

How Metal Certificates Work

To trace metal certificates, S1Seven uses the combination of blockchain, digital twins technology and tagging of the physical goods. This combination replaces hard copy inspection certificates with digital machine processable data, immutably stored on a decentralized platform that serves as the industry’s source of truth. At each step of production, S1Seven records material data such as processing parameters and test results to the blockchain in a tamper-proof way. Manufacturers can collect parameters and test results during steelmaking and manage who can access what data and under which conditions. Their vault serves as a platform to access, view and process data, from standard mill test reports to full digital twins providing material properties and quality measurements.

“RIDDLE&CODE took its experience of working within the highly-regulated Swiss banking industry and developing solutions with partners such as Daimler, Wien Energie, Deloitte, and applied it to drive digitisation to the metal industry,” said Alexander Koppel, RIDDLE&CODE’s CEO. “Our expertise in blockchain-powered hardware, software and digital identities allow us to create an incorruptible connection between the metal industry products and their quality data.”