Designers need a way to overcome information-related risks, including information leakage and misuse by their own collaborators during collaborative product realization. Existing cryptographic techniques aimed at overcoming these information-related risks are computationally expensive and impractical even for moderate problem sizes, and legal approaches such as nondisclosure agreements are not effective. The computational practicality problem is particularly pronounced for computational techniques, such as the finite element analysis (FEA). In this paper, we propose a technique that enables designers to perform simulations, such as FEA computations, without the need for revealing their information to anyone, including their design collaborators. We present a new approach, the secure finite element analysis approach, which enables designers to perform FEA without having to reveal structural/material information to their counterparts even though the computed answer depends on all the collaborators' confidential information. We build secure finite element analysis (sFEA) using computationally efficient protocols implementing a secure codesign (SCD) framework. One of our findings is that the direct implementation of using SCD framework (termed as naïve sFEA) suffers from lack of scalability. To overcome these limitations, we propose hybrid sFEA that implements performance improvement strategies. We document and discuss the experiments we conducted to determine the computational overhead imposed by both naïve and hybrid sFEA. The results indicate that the computational burden imposed by hybrid sFEA makes it challenging for large-scale FEA—our scheme significantly increases the problem sizes that can be handled when compared to implementations using previous algorithms and protocols, but large enough problem sizes will swamp our scheme as well (in some sense this is unavoidable because of the cubic nature of the FEA time complexity).

Developments in digital technology and manufacturing processes have expanded the horizon of designer innovation in creating products. In addition to this, real-time collaborative platforms help designers shorten the product development cycle by enabling collaborations with domain experts from concept generation to product realization and after-market. These collaborations are extending beyond enterprise and national boundaries, contributing to a growing concern among designers regarding the security of their sensitive information such as intellectual property (IP) and trade secrets. The source of such sensitive information leaks could be external (e.g., hacker) or internal (e.g., disgruntled employee) to the collaboration. From a designer's perspective, this fear can inhibit participation in a collaboration even though it might result in better products or services. In this paper, we aim to contextualize this evolving security space by discussing various security practices in digital domains, such as encryption and secret sharing, as well as manufacturing domains, such as physically unclonable function (PUF) and physical part watermarking for anticounterfeiting and tamper evidence purposes. Further, we classify these practices with respect to their performance against different adversarial models for different stages in product development. Such a classification can help designers to make informed decisions regarding security practices during the product realization process.

Information leakage can lead to loss of intellectual property and competitive edge. One of the primary sources of information leakage in collaborative design is sharing confidential information with collaborators, who may be also collaborating with competitors. Hiding information from collaborators is challenging in codesign because it can lead to inferior and suboptimal solutions. Therefore, there is a need for techniques that enable designers to protect confidential information from their collaborators while achieving solutions that are as good as those obtained when full information is shared. To address this need, we propose a secure codesign (SCD) framework that enables designers to achieve optimal solutions without sharing confidential information. It is built on two principles: adding/multiplying a parameter with a large random number hides the value of the parameter, and adding/multiplying a large number is orders of magnitude faster than using existing cryptographic techniques. Building on the protocols for basic arithmetic computations, developed in our earlier work, we establish protocols for higher order computations involved in design problems. The framework is demonstrated using three codesign scenarios: requirements-driven codesign, objective-driven codesign, and Nash noncooperation. We show that the proposed SCD framework enables designers to achieve optimal solutions in all three scenarios. The proposed framework is orders of magnitude faster than competing (but impractical for engineering design) cryptographic methods such as homomorphic encryption, without compromising on precision in computations. Hence, the proposed SCD framework is a practical approach for maintaining confidentiality of information during codesign.

The goal in this paper is to enable collaboration in the codesign of engineering artifacts when participants are reluctant to share their design-related confidential and proprietary information with other codesigners, even though such information is needed to analyze and validate the overall design. We demonstrate the viability of codesign by multiple entities who view the parameters of their contributions to the joint design to be confidential. In addition to satisfying this confidentiality requirement, an online codesign process must result in a design that is of the same quality as if full sharing of information had taken place between the codesigners. We present online codesign protocols that satisfy both requirements and demonstrate their practicality using a simple example of codesign of an automotive suspension system and the tires. Our protocols do not use any cryptographic primitives—they only use the kinds of mathematical operations that are currently used in single-designer situations. The participants in the online design protocols include the codesigners, and a cloud server that facilitates the process while learning nothing about the participants' confidential information or about the characteristics of the codesigned system. The only assumption made about this cloud server is that it does not collude with some participants against other participants. We do not assume that the server does not, on its own, attempt to compute as much information as it can about the confidential inputs and outputs of the codesign process: It can make a transcript of the protocol and later attempt to infer all possible information from it, so it is a feature of our protocols the cloud server can infer nothing from such a transcript.

Exchange and reuse of three-dimensional (3D) product models are hampered by the absence of trust in product-lifecycle data quality. The root cause of the missing trust is years of “silo” functions (e.g., engineering, manufacturing, and quality assurance) using independent and disconnected processes. Those disconnected processes result in data exchanges that do not contain all of the required information for each downstream lifecycle process, which inhibits the reuse of product data and results in duplicate data. The X.509 standard, maintained by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T), was first issued in 1988. Although originally intended as the authentication framework for the X.500 series for electronic directory services, the X.509 framework is used in a wide range of implementations outside the originally intended paradigm. These implementations range from encrypting websites to software-code signing, yet X.509 certificate use has not widely penetrated engineering and product realms. Our approach is not trying to provide security mechanisms, but equally as important, our method aims to provide insight into what is happening with product data to support trusting the data. This paper provides a review of the use of X.509 certificates and proposes a solution for embedding X.509 digital certificates in 3D models for authentication, authorization, and traceability of product data. This paper also describes an application within the aerospace domain. Finally, the paper draws conclusions and provides recommendations for further research into using X.509 certificates in product lifecycle management (PLM) workflows to enable a product lifecycle of trust.

Product development uses the engineering design process to conceptualize and design new products, while relying on computer-aided application tools like CAD/CAE/CAM that are unfortunately designed for single users. In the absence of multiuser engineering applications, this paper uses surveys and facility visits to show an increased reliance on social communication tools for closing design collaboration feedback loops. Product development requires collaboration among myriad personnel and organizations, each having unique complementary experiences and capabilities. Collaborative design has a primary goal: reduce time-to-market and competitive costs for new products, while retaining quality of product performance and minimizing environmental impact. The focus of this paper is to compare contemporary methods and tools used in collaborative product design at notable corporations to emerging multiuser computer-aided applications. This comparison will define a future where design mistakes and time-to-market are reduced, collaboration is not only truly concurrent, but simultaneously concurrent, and where design rationale is more easily captured and shared for later review and for educational training.

A web-based architecture of an radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking solution is proposed and deployed. The architecture attempts to depart from the typical localized approach of most RFID middlewares. The middleware has been replaced by a web service residing in a cloud. The traditional roles of the middleware such as tag data filtering, sorting, storage, and event processing have been redistributed amongst an RFID reader-based application and the web service. This architecture provides more flexibility and control to large scale RFID-based supply chain operations which are global in nature and unsuitable to the traditional localized middleware-based architecture of RFID tracking solutions. The feasibility of the web-based architecture is further augmented by validating performance parameters such as tag processing and primitive and complex event processing delay. Different subarchitectures are also proposed based on performance data for different scales of operations.

This paper describes the concept for and lessons from the development and field-testing of an open, interoperable communications infrastructure to support automated demand response (auto-DR). Automating DR allows greater levels of participation, improved reliability, and repeatability of the DR in participating facilities. This paper also presents the technical and architectural issues associated with auto-DR and description of the demand response automation server (DRAS), the client/server architecture-based middleware used to automate the interactions between the utilities or any DR serving entity and their customers for DR programs. Use case diagrams are presented to show the role of the DRAS between utility/ISO and the clients at the facilities.

Establishing efficient, effective, and trustworthy engineering collaboration while protecting intellectual property is vital to maintain organizational competence in today’s global business environment. In this paper, a lean information modeling and sharing framework is described to support engineering data security management in a peer-to-peer collaborative environment. It allows for selective and interoperable data sharing with fine-grained access control at both the server and client sides, thus securing different levels of design information dissemination for intellectual property protection purposes. The considerations of time and value-adding activity with roles, policy delegation relation in a distributed context, and fine-grained control at data set level in the model are to adhere to the general least privilege principle in access control. Heterogeneous design data are exchanged selectively through an eXtensible Markup Language common interface, which provides a neutral format to enhance data interoperability and prevents reverse engineering.

Information security and assurance are new frontiers for collaborative design. In this context, information assurance (IA) refers to methodologies to protect engineering information by ensuring its availability, confidentiality, integrity, nonrepudiation, authentication, access control, etc. In collaborative design, IA techniques are needed to protect intellectual property, establish security privileges and create “need to know” protections on critical features. This paper provides a framework for information assurance within collaborative design based on a technique we call Role-Based Viewing . We extend upon prior work to present Hierarchical Role-Based Viewing as a more flexible and practical approach since role hierarchies naturally reflect an organization’s lines of authority and responsibility. We establish a direct correspondence between multilevel security and multiresolution surfaces where a hierarchy is represented as a weighted directed acyclic graph. The permission discovery process is formalized as a graph reachability problem and the path-cost can be used as input to a multiresolution function. By incorporating security with collaborative design, the costs and risks incurred by multiorganizational collaboration can be reduced. The authors believe that this work is the first of its kind to unite multilevel security and information clouded with geometric data, including multiresolution surfaces, in the fields of computer-aided design and collaborative engineering.

During the development of the European Pressurized Water Reactor Project (EPR)—an innovative design concept for a new type of pressurized water reactor—large amounts of up-to-date engineering data (i.e., CAD data, planning documentation) have to be made available to all international project partners for presentation and development. This paper describes the web-based tool Virtual Web Plant (VWP), a tool to integrate three-dimensional models from various CAD plant design tools and to display them interactively. The user is hereby able to navigate easily through both the plant structure and the project documentation. The work presented in this paper is part of a Virtual Reality Research Project of the Heinz Nixdorf Institute and the Siemens AG KWU.