Digitalisation in metrology for a QI Digital

Due to the digital transformation, products as well as production and economic processes are changing massively and with increasing speed. The new requirements that go hand in hand with this present the established system of quality infrastructure (QI) with new challenges.

In order to meet these challenges, all quality assurance processes, such as conformity assessment, accreditation, certification and market surveillance, must be fully digitalised. All those involved must be digitally networked and act interoperably.

The PTB is therefore working together with the other players in national QI to implement a digitally transformed, interoperable and future-oriented quality infrastructure, the QI-Digital.

To this end, PTB's work consistently builds on the existing digital projects: digital, machine-readable certificates, digital networked processes, new production methods and artificial intelligence (AI). In QI-Digital, these are dovetailed with PTB's existing competences in the quality infrastructure - nationally and globally.

QI Digital for new products and manufacturing processes

Additive manufacturing offers new possibilities for the flexible production of complex products. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, this opens up a wide range of economic potential.

Together with the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), the PTB is developing effective and efficient methods for quality assurance in additive manufacturing in QI-Digital with the aim of transferring the corresponding competences to SMEs.

Digital processes for more effective and efficient QI

The development and establishment of digital processes and digital infrastructures offers enormous potential for QI to streamline and improve processes. PTB already started work several years ago on a cloud infrastructure for digital processes in legal metrology and the development of an XML schema for digital calibration certificates.

The PTB is consistently continuing this work in QI-Digital. The Metrology Cloud will be successively expanded into a QI-Cloud and, in particular, supplemented by a connection to GAIA-X. On the basis of the DCC (Digital Calibration Certificate), the PTB is developing a digital, machine-readable certificate for conformity assessment (Digital Certificate of Conformance, D-CoC).

QI for Artificial Intelligence

In the course of digitalisation, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) methods is increasingly accelerating the development of digital products and services. As the use of AI grows, the need for clear rules and consideration in the quality infrastructure increases.

The PTB has already been researching methods for quality assessment and assurance for AI methods in the health sector for some time. For QI-Digital, the PTB is massively expanding these activities into a new competence area " Opens internal link in current window Metrology for AI in Medicine". The aim is to build up long-term AI competences at the PTB with a focus on the assessment of AI methods.