Secure and Privacy-Respecting Documentation for Interactive Manufacturing and Quality Assurance

Abstract

The automated documentation of work steps is a requirement of many modern manufacturing processes. Especially when it comes to important procedures such as safety critical screw connections or weld seams, the correct and complete execution of certain manufacturing steps needs to be properly supervised, e.g., by capturing video snippets of the worker to be checked in hindsight. Without proper technical and organizational safeguards, such documentation data carries the potential for covert performance monitoring to the disadvantage of employees. Naïve documentation architectures interfere with data protection requirements, and thus cannot expect acceptance of employees. In this paper we outline use cases for automated documentation and describe an exemplary system architecture of a workflow recognition and documentation system. We derive privacy protection goals that we address with a suitable security architecture based on hybrid encryption, secret-sharing among multiple parties and remote attestation of the system to prevent manipulation. We finally contribute an outlook towards problems and possible solutions with regards to information that can leak through accessible metadata and with regard to more modular system architectures, where more sophisticated remote attestation approaches are needed to ensure the integrity of distributed components.