QI-Digital is an initiative of the key players in German QI: BAM, DAKKS, DIN, DKE, and PTB. The initiative is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE). Our innovation projects combine practical applications with fundamental scientific research. Together with our partners from industry, society, research, and politics, we create digital tools and processes for the market. In this way, we ensure the highest quality of innovative products and services for the future.
Quality infrastructure (QI) is anchored in legal structures and trade agreements worldwide. It forms the basis for verifiable and comparable quality, safety, and environmental compatibility of products and services. It is based on the interaction of metrology, standardization, conformity assessment, accreditation, and market surveillance.
The QI-Digital innovation ecosystem
Together with a network from business, science, and society, we develop solutions for a modern QI. The basis and framework for this is the QI Digital Innovation Ecosystem with case studies of economically significant technologies and innovations. The system comprises three pillars:
- The Practical test environments are designed as open cooperation platforms and provide the necessary physical infrastructure for the research and development work on our case studies: Reliable Hydrogen Refuelling Stations; Artificial Intelligence in Medicine; Additive Manufacturing for SMEs
- We address Research and development needs that go beyond this by involving other players from industry and research
- We are building the QI-Digital network for the transfer of our work into the economy and applications and for its sustainable impact, and we offer consulting and educational services as well as market potential and technology impact assessments.
A high-performance quality infrastructure (QI) is the foundation for competitiveness in industry and the economy. It ensures high product quality and equally ensures effective health, labor, environmental, and consumer protection. It is also an essential prerequisite for the success of the green and digital transformation as well as key political goals and programs.
The transformation of QI is a comprehensive undertaking, as it is a complex system comprising institutions, procedures, and tools and is embedded in legal and regulatory frameworks – both nationally and internationally. The fields of action are correspondingly complex.
QI with digital tools, processes, and data rooms will improve quality assurance processes in companies and enable the fast, integrated, and smooth provision of quality information across the entire value chain – for all players in QI. With the support of QI-Digital, requirements will in future be automatically checked as machine-readable standards (SMART standards), results reports will be provided digitally, and digital certificates will be transferred as eAttestion without media discontinuity. Digital data infrastructures such as Quality-X enable the optimization of data flow and access.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE
In 2023, the PTB established an office as a central point of contact for the QI-Digital initiative.
The Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) is a senior scientific and technical Federal institute with responsibility to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. It tests, researches and advises to protect people, the environment and material goods.
In compliance with the principle of subsidiarity, BAM provides science-based services for safety-related issues, e.g. in the form of expert opinions and expert reports or certified reference materials and interlaboratory tests. In addition, it covers services such as the testing, analysis and approval of substances, technical products and plants.
In QI-Digital, BAM is responsible for two pilot projects and sets up physical test environments for this purpose in order to develop new measurement and test methods for digital quality assurance. BAM is making a significant contribution to the development of the QI-Cloud.
For more information, visit www.bam.de.
German Accreditation Body (DAkkS)
Since Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008 came into force, accreditation has been a sovereign task throughout the European Union (EU) and is performed in the respective member states by a single national accreditation body. In Germany, the German Accreditation Body (DAkkS) is the responsible authority. Within the scope of accreditation, DAkkS assesses and supervises the work of conformity assessment bodies and thus contributes to improving the quality and safety of products and services.
Accreditation as the governmental guarantee on the competence and trustworthiness of conformity assessment bodies is becoming increasingly important in a digital quality infrastructure as more tests themselves become digitized or digital products and services need to be assessed. The assessment of competence is becoming increasingly dynamic. Together with the partners and the network of QI Digital, DAkkS is gathering empirical data to clearly define the requirements for conformity assessment bodies in these areas and to further develop existing requirements for new technologies.
DAkkS is contributing to the QI Digital initiative with projects on the digital, forgery-proof provision of attestations of conformity (eAttestation), as well as projects on artificial intelligence and the handling of digital testing methods in conformity assessment bodies.
For more information, visit https://www.dakks.de/en/home-en.html
DIN, the German Institute for Standardization, is the independent platform for standardization in Germany and worldwide. As a partner for industry, research and society as a whole, DIN plays a major role to opening up future fields. As a co-shaper of the digital and green transformation, DIN makes an important contribution to solving current challenges and enables new technologies, products and processes to establish themselves on the market and in society. Around 36,000 experts from industry, research, consumer protection and the public sector bring their expertise to work on standardization projects managed by DIN. The results of these efforts are market-oriented standards and specifications that promote global trade, encouraging rationalization, quality assurance and environmental protection as well as improving security and communication.
For more information, visit www.din.de/en.
The DKE Deutsche Kommission Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik in DIN und VDE, which is supported by the VDE, is the platform for around 9500 experts from industry, science and administration for the development of standards, norms and safety regulations for electrical engineering, electronics and information technology. As a competence center for electrotechnical standardization, DKE represents the interests of German industry in European (CENELEC, ETSI) and international standards organizations (IEC). In addition, the DKE provides comprehensive services related to standardization and the VDE body of regulations.
For more information, visit https://www.dke.de/en
The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute (NMI) of Germany. It is therefore the supreme authority in all questions of correct, accurate and trustworthy measurement. Together with NIST in the USA and the NPL in Great Britain, PTB ranks among the worldwide leading institutes of metrology. It is a scientific and technical higher federal authority falling under the competence of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
In accordance with the Units and Time Act, the PTB is responsible for the representation, preservation and dissemination of the international units of measurement as well as the development and provision of the national standards. The work at QI-Digital consistently builds on existing digital projects: digital, machine-readable certificates, digital networked processes, new production methods and artificial intelligence.
For more information, visit https://www.ptb.de/cms/en.html