Supply Chain Security Management through Data Process Decomposition: An Architecture Perspective

In today's volatile environment, we have never been more reliant on a tightly knit supply chain (SC). Globalisation, mass manufacturing, and specialisation are now hallmarks of our integrated, industrialised world. Decision-makers rely heavily on accurate up-to-the-minute data. Even the tiniest interruption in data flow can have a huge effect on the quality of decision-making and performance. In the full interconnection paradigm, this dependency has inadvertently pushed device connectivity toward an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) approach. This has allowed the provision of 'added value resources' such as SC optimisation for Industry 4.0 (I4.0) or enhanced process controls. While system interconnectivity has increased, Internet of Things (IoT) and I4.0 SC protection measures have lagged behind. The root cause of this disparity is the existing mainstream security practices inherited from industrial networks and linking systems that neglect any specific security capability. This paper introduces the preliminary design of an I4.0 SC architecture that offers a complete protocol break about how exacting security functions could be implemented by isolation, a rigorous access control system, and surveillance to ensure the proposed architecture's end-to-end security to I4.0 SC.