Controlflash Hardware Serialization for Accurate Industrial Inventories
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Solution Overview
Problem
Maintaining an accurate inventory of diverse industrial devices is challenging, and industrial asset owners often lack awareness of recalls, software updates, security vulnerabilities, or special offers applicable to their devices.
Innovation Solution
A system that discovers industrial products at a facility, retrieves identity objects containing product information, and renders a browsable inventory on a client device, providing proactive notifications and services such as authenticity verification, firmware upgrades, and security alerts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If manual inventory tracking methods are used for diverse industrial devices, then implementation simplicity is maintained, but inventory accuracy and completeness deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables industrial devices to self-report their identity and status information automatically through embedded identity objects. The discovery component autonomously scans the network for devices and retrieves their identity objects without manual intervention, allowing the inventory system to serve itself by automatically collecting and organizing device information from multiple sources including vendor registries and device metadata.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary inventory system that acts as a mediator between diverse industrial devices and asset owners. This system standardizes device information through a common data model, translating various device types and vendor formats into a unified structure that can be easily managed and queried, thereby improving inventory accuracy without requiring complex custom solutions for each device type.
2Loss of information
If comprehensive device information is collected from multiple sources, then inventory completeness improves, but data management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal identity object structure that can accommodate information from multiple sources including device metadata, vendor registries, and network discovery protocols. This multi-functional data model can represent diverse information types (hardware identifiers, software versions, vendor information, operational status) in a unified format, allowing the system to collect comprehensive device information while maintaining consistent data management through a single standardized structure.
3Measurement precision
If identity objects are stored on each industrial product, then product identification capability improves, but device security vulnerability increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by storing different types of information in appropriately secured locations. Sensitive security-critical data is kept in protected areas of the identity object with restricted access, while non-sensitive identification information is made more accessible for discovery purposes. The system implements layered security where different portions of the identity object have different access controls, allowing device identification functionality while minimizing security exposure.
Data Source
AI summary
An industrial product inventory system generates a browsable inventory of a customer's industrial products based on product information retrieved from identity objects stored on the products. The system can also register this product information with a service provider that can provide product notifications and services based on analysis of the registered product information. These services can include verification of product authenticity, product or firmware upgrade notifications, security notifications, or other such services.