All-Around Approach for Reliability of Measurement Data in the Industry 4.0

The paper deals with the offer of actual operating scenarios for companies, like Industry 4.0 and/or IoT, about new metrological opportunities and the promise of lowering cost of using instrumentation. This possibility is related to the new sensor and sensor network technologies, to the interconnectivity, to the possibility of managing and processing big quantity of data and of storing them in a safe way, preventing intromission and unwanted and malicious access, according to the digitalization of data flows. A discussion of the whole lifecycle of the information, throughout the measurement process, is carried out, emphasizing the opportunities of selecting a coordinate point of view of the problems. Physical interpretation of traditional metrological concepts helps to realize this view, proposing new modalities to fulfill the measurement requirements from the technical and the economical point of view. This consideration is useful in order to make solutions practicable also for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Technical solutions for allowing a satisfactory trade-off between data security and cost in different operating scenarios are also of concern and will be described by a simple example.