Monitoring and Improving Process by Trusted Measuring and Adapting

Considerable article brought to my attention my Alex Renz. Connecting Distributed Ledgers and Operations Technology,  Ultimately my closest goal.  How do we improve process  by measurement, goals and analytics?  Here a novel direction example:

“OT is hardware and software dedicated to detecting or causing changes in physical processes through direct monitoring and/or control of physical devices such as valves, pumps, etc.”
— Gartner IT Glossary, as of Jan. 2019

IILA x IOTA — Bridging the Gap between OT and IT in Production Metrology

Creating a Wireless Smart Device Gateway for Quality Applications using Mahr Measuring Instruments

By Daniel Trauth
Co-Authors: Ashri Anggia, Semjon Becker, Sascha Kamps

Quality Applications in Production Metrology

Quality applications and production measurement technology (referred to as Production Metrology) cover an important market, see Figure 1. In Germany alone, revenues from the manufacture of measuring and testing instruments rose from USD 28 billion to USD 38 billion between 2010 and 2016. According to a statistic by Statista, a further increase to USD 41 billion is expected in Germany by 2020. Although Germany is an important industrial nation, the figure below shows an incredible worldwide potential in the field of quality applications and production measurement technology.

In quality applications and production metrology, measured data — referring to the quality of a product — is exchanged between manufacturers (e.g. OEMs) and their suppliers; most probably in a different variety of formats and in a short notice. This non-standardised exchange of quality data is associated with considerable financial losses, because on one hand there is no reasonable exchange standard and on the other hand cooperation between manufacturers and suppliers without exchange standard simply does not work.

In recent years, few attempts for exchange protocols like Quality Data eXchange (QDX) or Advanced Quality Data Exchange Format (AQDEF) have become increasingly common in use. For direct integration of devices into Statistical Process Control (SPC) software, some standards such as the MUX-50 data format are available. However, this is an error-prone process with low trustworthiness.

It is imperative that the measured data should be transferred immutably conforming high data security standards and existing data exchange protocols. With advancing digitisation and globalisation, the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a decentralised protocol can lead to a worldwide backbone for measured quality data, enabling trust, data security and widely useful exchange format. But first, one needs a concept to combine Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT). .... "