Procedure for the transfer of standards into machine-actionability

Abstract

The aim of this research is to establish clear concepts for working with standards (e.g. ISO) in the context of connected factory. When machines or other output devices need to communicate with each other, e.g., to autonomously perform processes in manufacturing processes, all the necessary information must be accessible to them. Today, however, the required information is documented in standards that are only available in PDF or even paper form. Thus, a prerequisite for using information from standards is that these are automatically provided in output devices. A deeper look leads to three levels of maturity for using standard information in output devices: machine-readable, machine-actionable and machine-interpretable. Starting from a clear definition of these terms an approach is developed to implement machine-actionable standards. It is assumed that not all standards are suitable for machine-actionability and therefore the first step is to classify the standards in order to identify the appropriate standards. The second step describes how information from standards can be modelled to be available in a machine-actionable form. The last step clarifies how the machine-actionable content must be provided afterwards so that they can be used in all output devices with less effort. This research work closes with the validation of the developed approach. possible to transform them into other objects. For example, diagrams can be transformed into tables.As shown in Fig. 4, to classify the objects into three categories, the following rules are used. If there is a large number of objects that have a high proportion of clear definable objects, they are assigned to formal; if they have a medium proportion, they are assigned to semi-formal, and if they have a low proportion, they are assigned to abstract.Definition abstract standard: Standards which are assigned to the class abstract consist mostly of objects which have a low uniqueness, e.g. texts. These are not further considered for machine-actionability. An example of this category is ISO 9001.Definition semi-formal standard: Semi-formal standards are standards that contain information in various forms of representation. They include not only textual components that describe states, output classifications or test procedures, but also information in formal description like tables with values or mathematical formulas. Or however descriptive/explanatory/definitive texts can be converted easily into if/then instructions. Then it is possible to transform semi-formal norms into formal norms.Definition formal standard: Formal standards can be classified as standards whose information has a high degree of clarity, such as formulas or tables with values. As an example, a standard for the description of component sizes (e.g. for flanges) can be mentioned. Formulas can also be used to determine dimensioning variables.

Representation and Application of Digital Standards Using Knowledge Graphs

“…Further development stages of digital standards include the semantics of information in order to automatically enforce operations in output devices. They are defined by Loibl et al (2020) as machine-actionable and machine-interpretable whereas the latter represents the highest level of automation. Currently, standardization organizations are in transition between machine-readable and machine-actionable content.…”

“…While XML is powerful in representing the syntactic, structural properties of data and is, thus, particularly suitable for their exchange, the representation of semantic relations is limited which negatively effects the semantic interoperability of XML data (Tekli et al, 2016). However, since semantics is a prerequisite for machine-actionable standards, it can be assumed that the current representation of standards in XML format is not sufficient (Loibl et al, 2020). In the context of standardization, the absence of semantic information in XML documents and potential other types of representation have not been investigated in detail.…”

“…In the context of standardization, the absence of semantic information in XML documents and potential other types of representation have not been investigated in detail. Loibl et al (2020) describe a procedure to classify standards according to their degree of formalization and to model and store standard content in a graph database. Additionally, Manoharan and Koehler (2018) conclude that the highly interconnected information of standards should not be stored in tabular form, but in graph databases such as Neo4j whereas the so called knowledge graph could then be provided to the user via micro services.…”

“…In order to automatically integrate digital standards into development processes and tools, standard content needs to be offered in machine-actionable format (Loibl et al, 2020). As this requires the representation of semantic relationships, which cannot be achieved by the currently used XML format, content needs to be transferred to an appropriate representation type.…”

Recommendations for an Open Science approach to welding process research data

“…In the future, the widespread adoption of a common file format might also lead to faster adoption rates from research findings into industrial applications or standardization practices. Conversely, the continuing trend towards digitalization and machine-actionability of standards [36] provides an additional starting point for integration and can be reflected into data models for welding research data. Using a common file format as a bridge between novel complex research applications and digitized standards could help foster relations between research and standardization in both directions.…”