• Comment:

    EFPF ensured that the Factory platform complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Aligning project objectives and activities with existing laws and standards is a crucial component of EFPF. In order to ease data sharing and standardisation procedures, it also engages in significant engagements with national and European regulation and standardisation organisations on smart industrial automation, data processing, and analytics. The question of which of the increasingly overlapping standards to use as a reference for every particular platform solution confronts researchers and technicians at EFPF. This is a typical issue in any field where standards are in conflict or overlap. 

    The strategy used by EFPF is to closely monitor the development of various standardisation initiatives. With the assistance of experts (like ASI, a core partner of EFPF), RTD activities are aligned with ongoing standardisation activities with the goal of adopting existing standards and, when possible, contributing to their development. Based on the nature of technical activities in WP3 to WP7, the following aspects of EFPF are considered relevant to the ongoing standardisation and regulation activities:

    • Connecting multiple digital manufacturing tools, services and platforms through APIs and service interfaces to realise a federated platform;
    • Exchange of data by the diverse tools, systems and platforms that need to be federated through the Data Spine;
    • Establishing interconnectivity and interoperability to most widely used industrial data exchange standards and systems;
    • Smart contracting in agile value networks through the use of blockchain technology; 
    • Security and privacy of information exchanged between partners in collaboration and also, the information exchanged through the platform;
    • Linkage and interoperability of commonly used security protocols; and
    • The use of Cloud services for storage and marketplace solutions.