The Manufacturing-X framework as the basis for building cross-industry data spaces

Manufacturing-X – Make Data Work is the guiding principle for cross-industry advancement in industrial production. A common sovereign infrastructure is essential for enabling collaborative and scalable use of data across all sectors of the manufacturing industry. This infrastructure forms the basis for the shared utilization of a federated and independent data ecosystem.

The Manufacturing-X initiative is built upon a holistic approach to developing and promoting the next evolutionary stage of industrial production. The overarching strategic objectives aim at establishing a resilient, sustainable, and competitive industry. Manufacturing-X therefore addresses cross-sector use cases for collaborative data usage to unlock great economic and ecological potential.
For this purpose, common standards need to be established and must be operated within a trustworthy technical infrastructure that ensures interoperability and sovereignty. Manufacturing-X is therefore based on a common technical, organizational, and legal framework and contributes to future development in cooperation with European and international lawmakers.

Manufacturing-X focuses on economic and ecological use cases

Manufacturing-X aims to implement cross-industry use cases with high economic and socially sustainable impact. The focus is always on the question of what added value a use case can offer each partner in the supply chain.
Each considered use case must meet the strategic objectives of Manufacturing-X: resilience, competitiveness, and sustainability. In implementation-oriented approaches like Manufacturing-X, the interests of all value chain partners, whether large companies or SMEs, must be equally considered and clear economic or ecological benefits must be understandable and achievable for all participating partners. Therefore, the focus of Manufacturing-X is on use cases that are relevant to many companies and transferable to other industries.
Across all use cases, it must be ensured that data exchange is interoperable and data sovereignty of all value chain partners is preserved. That is why central core elements are required and must be provided across all industries for every use case.

Architecture and technology: four core elements secure the interoperable exchange of data

A cross-industry technical architecture for Manufacturing-X is THE key to creating interoperability. For this purpose, common central elements of the technical and organizational architecture are developed. These elements ensure interoperability not only within one industry but also across industries. The architecture aims to technically integrate existing and future systems within production data spaces.

The requirements for these four core elements for the industry-specific use cases – the so-called building blocks – have certain similarities. Therefore, these four building blocks can be developed across industries with a cooperative approach.

• „Identity & Trust" focuses on security aspects of data sharing processes. Data is only shared between partners who trust each other. Both senders and recipients can be clearly identified.
• "Visibility & Access" includes standardized technologies and mechanisms for multilateral data sharing, for example, using interoperable interfaces to achieve high efficiency.
• "Service & Sharing" involves providing central services for the efficient design and implementation of data sharing processes, for example, a uniform registry service for searching and locating decentrally distributed data sets.
• "Agreements" provide the basic services for uniform contract management in multilateral data sharing processes. The focus is on establishing legal certainty in multilateral data sharing and on aspects of monetization of data flows.

Thus, the Manufacturing-X community is driving the development of a common technological foundation that can be built upon by all industries to enable the design of individual solutions.