Product data tracking, the way to go in an industrial laboratory environment

摘要

In the research laboratories of the steel company Corus many different experiments are done to investigate the various phases of the steel and application production. Series of experiments generate large amounts of measurement and control data, which are stored in files on local PCs or file servers. Within a collection of several ten thousands of data files that are scattered over twenty departments, it can become a time consuming task to find and retrieve the required data. To avoid an inefficient manual data retrieval process a so-called product tracking system has been developed. As all research equipments make use of data acquisition and control software, it is possible to store the generated data files on a central file server automatically. To ensure the traceability of data files, accompanying metadata is stored in a relational database. Through a user-friendly web interface, all interested users within the Corus research organisation can access the data warehouse. Data files can be downloaded to local PCs for further analyses.