PRO-OPT

In addition to the vertical digital integration from the business process level down to individual plant components and sensors in a factory, horizontal integration into a smart ecosystem via value chains enables some completely new business models. However, collaboration among companies and (automated) data exchange on a large scale call for trust-based cooperation in terms of data protection, data quality, and data security.

For this purpose, the concept of data usage control has been implemented at Fraunhofer IESE in various technical solutions. It combines data protection and data security with a flexible and easy-to-understand definition of who is allowed to use which data how, when, and where. In the context of the project PRO-OPT, different partners have been studying and evaluating digital cooperation models since the beginning of 2015. The usage context in this project is the automobile: In car repair shops, data and features of millions of vehicles are being captured in a distributed manner at various times and in numerous different locations. This is valuable information that could be used by manufacturers and suppliers to detect defects early on and to optimize the development of future systems. But under which circumstances and with which billing modalities are data being exchanged here? Is it possible to set up a needs-oriented flexible service? How to ensure data protection and data security? How to prevent misuse and manipulation? These and other issues are being investigated in PRO-OPT and are being illustrated with the help of demonstrators and examples. The contribution of Fraunhofer IESE is its IND²UCE framework for flexible data usage control, which has already been applied successfully in other projects as well.