Legal Perspectives on Predictive Maintenance: A Case Study

Corrado Druetta, Legal Counsel , COMAU S.p.A.

The “fourth industrial revolution” is impacting manufacturing systems, leading conventional industry into an hyper-connected world of sensors, metrics and data flows inside and outside the factories. Such augmented complexity goes with new legal challenges posed by the increasing interaction between human workers, AI algorithms and production lines. The case study will present “predictive maintenance”(i.e. advanced monitoring technologies, statistical process control and equipment performance tests applied to industrial maintenance for the purpose of early detection and elimination of equipment defects) as the perfect test bed where to detect and describe most of the new legal pitfalls within “Industry 4.0” breakthrough applications. In particular, this paper will focus on data ownership, trade secrecy, privacy and export controls. Keywords: Predictive maintenance – Industry 4.0 – European Union – data ownership – trade secrecy – privacy – export controls.