A design file leaves a designer, goes to Würth, then to a print shop, then to the customer who ordered the part.
Four companies. Four separate systems. Four versions of what happened.
Securing the file is the part everyone expects to be hard, and it is the part that is furthest along. Encrypting a design, splitting it, and releasing it only to an authorized machine is engineering we know how to do.
What stops the industry is the record. Who was allowed to print, how many times, and what was actually produced. Everyone in the chain needs the same answer, and none of them can be the one who holds it.
Give the record to the designer, and the print shop is trusting them. Give it to the distributor, and everyone else is. Put it in a shared database, and someone still administers it, which means someone can still change it.
This is the problem we are working on with Würth, and it is why the record sits on a blockchain. Not the design. The account of what was licensed and what was printed, written once, visible to all four, owned by none of them.
For the engineer who spent three years on that design, it means something simple. She can let it travel, and still know what it did.