Interoperability requirements for Zero Defect Manufacturing within Industry4.0

The paper addresses, based on a qualitative study comprising five companies, requirements for interoperability concerning Zero Defect Manufacturing (ZDM) in an Industry4.0 context. The results outline a strong link between well working interoperability and achieving the benefits from ZDM efforts. Further, the results also outline the need for getting out the right data from production processes and keep high data quality supported by management attention and a clear vision. The results are aligned with existing literature and studies but bring up more details on requirements on evolving interoperability for ZDM in terms of data quality and how the analytic output can be used for decisions based on the reliability and confidence levels. In addition, the increased need for cybersecurity within ZDM is highlighted where also cybersecurity requires interoperability to function well over time.