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Organisationseinheit der BAM
Global supply chains rely on the compliance and safety of their products, processes, and facilities. These vital services (often referred to as ‘quality assurance’ or ‘conformity assessment’ services) are provided by Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs). This empirical study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on CABs as well as their response to the resulting challenges. Data was gathered through an online survey among all accredited CABs in Germany, which resulted in 555 valid responses. Taking a resilience perspective, we reveal that CABs were hit hard by the disruptions caused by the pandemic, albeit to different degrees, in part due to their type of services, size, and sectors served. Furthermore, we find that contingency plans do not directly cushion order declines (as the main indicator of the economic impact of the pandemic) but rather indirectly through helping CABs respond more quickly, which in turn mitigates their order declines. However, our results show that contingency plans can also have adverse effects if they hinder flexible reaction to the crisis. The findings of our study help managers and policymakers learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and improve the resilience of the conformity assessment sector and quality assurance in the event of future crises.
Clean technologies play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting the climate. Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier and fuel that can be used in many applications. We explore the global hydrogen technological innovation system (TIS) by analyzing the three knowledge and technology transfer channels of publications, patents, and standards. Since the adoption of hydrogen technologies requires trust in their safety,this study specifically also focuses on hydrogen safety. Our results show that general and hydrogen safety research has increased significantly while patenting experienced stagnation. An analysis of the non-patent literature in safety patents shows little recognition of scientific publications. Similarly, publications are underrepresented in the analyzed 75 international hydrogen and fuel cell standards. This limited transfer of knowledge from published research to standards points to the necessity for greater involvement of researchers in standardization. We further derive implications for the hydrogen TIS and recommendations for a better and more impactful alignment of the three transfer channels.
Despite the growing dependence of companies on information technology and the increasingly negative impact of security incidents worldwide, there is little research on the management of information security at the company level. This paper seeks to expand knowledge on the implementation of an information security management system based on the widely used international standard ISO/IEC 27001. We present motives, experienced impacts, and obstacles related to ISO/IEC 27001 implementation using data from a survey of 125 ISO/IEC 27001 certified companies in Germany. Since adoption rates vary between ICT and non-ICT sector companies, we highlight sector-related variations. We classify the adoption of this standard as a preventive organizational innovation and apply Structural Equation Modeling to unearth explanations for the comparatively low adoption of this management system standard among companies outside the ICT sector. We, therefore, derive recommendations for policymakers, standardization, and certification bodies to foster its diffusion.
The COVID-19 pandemic posed new and manifold challenges to organizations and their operations worldwide. Conformity assessment bodies (CABs), such as testing or medical laboratories, certification, and inspection bodies, were also affected by the associated disruptions. Their role in this crisis is highly relevant, as CABs are essential pillars of the quality infrastructure: their activities ensure that products and services meet requirements as defined in standards and regulations, thereby contributing to their safety and reliability. The question arises of how CABs and their operations were affected by the pandemic and how they responded. To this end, we present the results of an international survey of 986 CABs of all types in Germany, the UK, Italy, and New Zealand. Overall, CABs reported, on average, a reduction in demand for their services during the pandemic, facing restrictions in all countries. In addition, the pandemic had an overall negative impact on the CABs’ investment and innovation activities. However, investments in digital infrastructure were increased as a countermeasure, with CABs reporting a higher need for digitalization. The paper highlights and discusses results from in-depth analyses relevant to policymakers and industry alike.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) poses multiple challenges to traditional standardization, due to the complexity, dynamics, and accelerating speed of technological progress. The need for a timely availability of standards calls for new approaches and tools to enhance standardization processes for smart manufacturing. Industry and standards development organizations worldwide are seeking new solutions. Testbeds have been acknowledged in innovation policy as a powerful tool for knowledge transfer and the further development of emerging technologies. Lately, they have also attracted increasing attention from the standardization perspective as a promising tool for a more agile standards development process. Proponents of such testbeds expect them to support standardization by providing validated solutions and accelerating the processes to meet the growing demands for faster standardization without any detriment to quality. In an explorative, qualitative approach this article is the first to investigate the operation and impact of testbeds in standardization processes based on a multiple case study on testbeds implemented worldwide in the context of the IIoT.
Smart Products Enable Smart Regulations—Optimal Durability Requirements Facilitated by the IoT
(2021)
The challenges and opportunities linked with IoT have been intensively discussed in recent years. The connectivity of things over their entire life cycle and the smart properties associated with it provide new functionalities and unprecedented availability of (usage) data. This offers huge opportunities for manufacturers, service providers, users, and also policymakers. The latter May impact policy areas such as the regulations on resource and materials efficiency under the Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC. With the general approach as it is practiced today, legal requirements are usually set for entire product groups without considering the products individually, including user behavior and environmental conditions. The increasing number of smart products and the growing availability of product data are sparking a discussion on whether these requirements could be more product and application-specific. This paper presents a method for calculating the economically and ecologically optimal durability of a product. It allows determining the point in time when a product should be replaced by combining consumer data with product design data. This novel Approach could contribute to making product regulation more flexible and possibly more efficient. In this context, fundamental challenges associated with smart products in policymaking are also discussed.
Additive Manufacturing provides an important enabling technology for the digital transformation of the economy. As an emerging technology it has seen a remarkable development over the last three decades. Nevertheless, it is far from a broad adoption with several barriers to overcome yet. One of the major challenges is the lack of standards. The critical role of standardization for innovation is generally recognized, still the topic too often has been neglected in strategic roadmapping exercises for emerging technologies. Too little is known about the complex dynamics and interrelations of standardization and innovation. The anticipation of standardization needs and the timely and efficient implementation of standards is challenging. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the role that standards play in the multi-dimensional system of innovation. It analyzes the trajectories of innovation in Additive Manufacturing in a systematic and holistic way, focusing on standardization activities with regard to coordination, stakeholders involved, the timing and types of standards developed. Putting standardization in context of the multi-dimensional innovation system of Additive Manufacturing the research shows where standards can support the diffusion of an emerging technology.
The expansive production of data in materials science, their widespread sharing and repurposing requires educated support and stewardship. In order to ensure that this need helps rather than hinders scientific work, the implementation of the FAIR-data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) must not be too narrow. Besides, the wider materials-science community ought to agree on the strategies to tackle the challenges that are specific to its data, both from computations and experiments. In this paper, we present the result of the discussions held at the workshop on “Shared Metadata and Data Formats for Big-Data Driven Materials Science”. We start from an operative definition of metadata, and the features that a FAIR-compliant metadata schema should have. We will mainly focus on computational materials-science data and propose a constructive approach for the FAIRification of the (meta)data related to ground-state and excited-states calculations, potential-energy sampling, and generalized workflows. Finally, challenges with the FAIRification of experimental (meta)data and materials-science ontologies are presented together with an outlook of how to meet them.
The global trend towards decarbonization and the demand for energy security have put hydrogen energy into the spotlight of industry, politics, and societies. Numerous governments worldwide are adopting policies and strategies to facilitate the transition towards hydrogen-based economies. To assess the determinants of such transition, this study presents a comparative analysis of the technological innovation systems (TISs) for hydrogen technologies in Germany and South Korea, both recognized as global frontrunners in advancing and implementing hydrogen-based solutions. By providing a multidimensional assessment of pathways to the hydrogen economy, our analysis introduces two novel and crucial elements to the TIS analysis: (i) We integrate the concept of ‘quality infrastructure’ given the relevance of safety and quality assurance for technology adoption and social acceptance, and (ii) we emphasize the social perspective within the hydrogen TIS. To this end, we conducted 24 semi-structured expert interviews, applying qualitative open coding to analyze the data. Our results indicate that the hydrogen TISs in both countries have undergone significant developments across various dimensions. However, several barriers still hinder the further realization of a hydrogen economy. Based on our findings, we propose policy implications that can facilitate informed policy decisions for a successful hydrogen transition.