Abstract

For the maintenance of a fleet, e.g. for air, sea or rail traffic, Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) companies depend on a safe and fast supply of spare parts. Particular importance lies in safety-relevant spare parts, which must have a complete life cycle documentation of all workshop events in order to be approved for further use. Current documentation practice is characterized by manual recording and analogue storage of workshop certificates, which leads to a high degree of uncertainty due to manipulable, error-prone and incomplete documentation and thus unnecessary scrapping of valuable spare parts. Because of the lack of a central authority that could provide a corresponding IT system, digitization of the documentation process was not yet possible. This work follows design science principles to create, evaluate and present a blockchain-based IT artefact that enables the digitization of the documentation process based on Hyperledger Fabric. Our research responds to shortcomings in the current analogue business process and to calls for practical use cases in the blockchain research field. Relevance is ensured by close cooperation with domain experts from the aviation industry. Projectable patterns in the documentation process are identified to enable an application of the artefact to a broad solution space.

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