Press release: Using Manufacturing Data Sovereignly with the WZL/IPT MachineCloud
senseering built one of the first federated, decentralized and self-determined IoT Data Spaces according to the GAIA-X standard for the WZL of RWTH Aachen University and Fraunhofer IPT
At the turn of 2020/2021, the WZL/IPT MachineCloud was successfully installed at the Chair of Manufacturing Process Technology of the WZL Machine Tool Laboratory at RWTH Aachen University and the Process Technology organizational unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT.
senseering knows GAIA-X
Behind the project name WZL/IPT MachineCloud is senseering’s interpretation — based on the concept of MyDataEconomy — of a GAIA-X-inspired, federated, decentralized and self-determined IoT data space for the industrial machinery and equipment of the WZL and IPT. Currently still in prototype status, the essential software building blocks for the creation of an own IoT data space will be open source after a successful pilot phase.
What is GAIA-X?
With the “GAIA-X” concept, the German government, and its European partners, have developed a proposal for the design of the next generation of a data infrastructure for Europe, which addresses the above-mentioned problems. GAIA-X aims at a secure and interconnected data infrastructure based on European values that meets the highest standards of digital sovereignty and promotes disruptive innovation. In an open and transparent digital ecosystem, data and services are to be made easily available, brought together and shared with confidence.
Realizing the digital factory today
Initially launched with five highly complex and innovative manufacturing machines, the WZL/IPT MachineCloud is expected to include up to 25 complete digital twins of WZL/IPT industrial machines and devices by the time of the Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium on June 10 and 11, 2021. Some of the five pilot machines are already connected to the WZL/IPT MachineCloud via 5G thanks to a cooperation with 5G-Industry Campus Europe.
“By the end of 2021, no IoT device by Thomas Bergs should be offline.” — Dr. Daniel Trauth, founder of senseering GmbH
Secure, self-determined and sovereign data use
For the first time, the WZL/IPT MachineCloud seamlessly enables the sovereign and sovereign exchange of heterogeneous IoT data sources from different machine and device manufacturers inside and outside the WZL’s and IPT’s own halls. Three locations, Campus Boulevard 30, Rotter Bruch 12, and Steinbachstr. 17 and 19, each in Aachen, are connected at any time and any place via a hybrid architecture of high-performance edge devices and an orchestrating cloud catalog. This provides the renowned employees of WZL and IPT with seamless control and monitoring of production, not only in the Corona-related home office.
“What seemed impossible until recently will now be commonplace: The joint development of AI services on different data sets from different stakeholders for maximum effectiveness in manufacturing supply chains.” — Prof. Thomas Bergs, Executive Director of the WZL, Chair of Manufacturing Process Technology at the WZL and Member of the Board of Directors for Process Technology at the Fraunhofer IPT.
Between 5G, Condition Monitoring and Machine Economy with IOTA
The first use cases of the WZL/IPT MachineCloud include condition monitoring and predictive maintenance of industrial plants costing up to several million euros. For this, it is necessary that even high-frequency and latency-critical big data is processed at the edge in a process-safe manner and that critical anomalies are available as close to real time as possible.
The particular GAIA-X inspired implementation allows suppliers and customers to be integrated into the WZL/IPT MachineCloud in a fast, lean and secure way. This makes use cases from the area of predictive quality particularly attractive, as data from supply chain partners is available for the first time in addition to the company’s own data, allowing process control to be coordinated even better than before.
But that’s not all. Through the tangle of the IOTA Foundation Berlin, the gateway to a Machine Economy is open to the participants of the WZL/IPT MachineCloud. It would already be technically possible to sell the scientists’ valuable and unique experimental data to the international scientific or business community.
What’s next?
senseering continues to support the WZL and IPT team in the onboarding of their IoT devices. In the process, a defined subset of research data will also be shared with the SPAICER research project. Interested suppliers or customers of WZL and IPT are also welcome to contact us.
About senseering
The senseering GmbH is a company founded in September 2018 that was awarded the RWTH Aachen University Spin-Off-Award. The core competence of senseering GmbH is the development and implementation of systems for the digitalization and networking of industrial and production facilities. Likewise, senseering GmbH advises on strategic corporate issues, in particular digital transformation, distributed-leger technologies, edge vs. cloud computing architectures for AI-based real-time control of industrial processes, digital business model innovation and the introduction of digital business processes such as home office, Azure or Microsoft365. Senseering is one of the winners of the first and largest AI innovation competition of the BMWi with the project www.spaicer.de.
Daniel Trauth (CEO) | www.senseering.de | E-Mail: mail@senseering.de
