On Monday, blockchain startup Authenticiti announced that it’s partnering with Capgemini it’s working on a blockchain solution with the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) to provide blockchain audit trails for government aircraft parts contractors.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has a process (Form 250) that requires contractors to provide evidence of configuration, testing and quality assurance certification for the parts they supply, whether they manufacture the part themselves or subcontract it to a supplier. By using blockchain, it provides an automated, immutable process that can be trusted.
With the current slow manual process, it creates delays, and in turn, the supplier won’t get paid by the DoD until the evidence is provided.
Addressing this DoD process was raised as a topic in the AIA distributed LEDGER technology (DLT) working group for which Authenticiti and Capgemini developed a demonstration solution.
“The DoD250 process is traditionally labor-intensive, leading to errors and an excess of time spent checking the data,” said Andrew Yang, CEO of Authenticiti. “This solution can be accessed via GovCloud or deployed rapidly on-premise and connect to the right network. Now all parties can have complete assurance their data is validated and only accessible to the right stakeholders in the way they have consented to share it.”
Authenticiti uses an enterprise version of the Ethereum blockchain.
“Distributed ledger technology can transform the way the aerospace and defense industry does business, helping us reduce administrative costs and time between contract and delivery of our products,” said Rusty Rentsch, Vice President of Technical Operations and Standards at AIA.
Meanwhile, several other organizations are involved in blockchain solutions for aircraft parts traceability. SimbaChain has multiple government projects including for parts traceability for the U.S. Airforce and U.S. Navy and Thales has also developed a traceability solution for military contractors. Private sector solutions for parts traceability have been developed by Honeywell, GE Aviation, and SITA.
