KNOWLEDGE CHANGES LIFE

The effect of knowledge

Every insight introduces us to new ideas or presents us with un­expected challenges – as 2020 has most emphatically demon­strated. The employees of TÜV NORD GROUP work closely ­together and use their collective expertise to make it possible for society in ­general and our customers in particular to feel safe and secure in new ways. In the process, they often come up with new ideas themselves.

Licence to hack

Knowledge that creates trust:
The coronavirus warning app on the test bench

By mid-June 2020, the German coronavirus warning app, which had been developed on behalf of the Federal Government, was ready. With the aim of containing the pandemic and breaking infection chains, it warns users, under certain conditions, if they have been in contact with an infected person. “It was foreseeable that a lot of people would react sensitively to data protection issues with this app, and that some would even be concerned about the possibility of surveillance by the state,” recalls Dirk Kretzschmar, Managing Director of TÜV Informationstechnik GmbH (TÜViT). “So, it was crucial for its future success for confidence in the app to be underpinned right from the outset. A successful TÜV test sends a valuable signal here.”

Mr Kretzschmar offered to inspect the coronavirus warning app in detail for IT and data security – and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) duly entrusted TÜViT with this task. Because time was pressing – the launch date of the app had already been announced publicly – Mr Kretzschmar promptly set up a test task force. This included Timo Müller, a long-time IT security consultant at TÜViT, who, in another life, could also have made a career as a hacker. He specialises in what are known as pen (penetration) tests. That is to say, he analyses IT systems and checks their vulnerability to hacker attacks. He and his colleagues worked in shifts to test the app day and night: “Of course, we were in an exceptional situation and were very strongly motivated – simply because this app is so very important to society.” In collaboration with the app developers, all the vulnerabilities identified could be fixed immediately.

By the end of January 2021, more than 25 million people had downloaded the app to help contain the pandemic. However, due to the constraints of data protection, the app cannot fully exploit its potential to make a profound impact. Whether the requirements for this will be relaxed remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that the health authorities urgently need to go digital to protect public health. Here, cybersecurity is also not just an option, but a must – as it is, incidentally, in any digital application, whether it is used in industry, smart home devices or ordinary app updates. Mr Kretzschmar emphasises what is often forgotten: "Cybersecurity isn’t a static condition, but a constant process.”

High performance under high pressure

Knowledge that protects health:
Respiratory masks for specialised medical staff tested

When the first wave of coronavirus reached Germany in March 2020, all the talk was of “flattening the curve”. What sounded so easy quickly turned out to be a major under­taking: the containment of a pandemic. While the population was practising social distancing and hygiene rules, TÜV NORD CERT received an urgent request from the Federal Ministry of Health. The Zentralstelle der Länder für Sicherheitstechnik (ZLS; central office for safety technology), a joint authority of all 16 federal states, was asking for help. As Svenja Schneider, whose team at TÜV NORD CERT is still supervising the project, recalls: “The ZLS had identified a massive problem. The demand for respiratory masks for healthcare workers was increasing so rapidly that products were being imported in bulk from abroad. But the question was whether their protective performance would meet the high German safety standards.”

It was to verify this that certification body TÜV NORD CERT quickly brought in the Essen-based team from DMT. This made sense because it was here that the necessary laboratory equipment and the long years of measurement expertise were available. Dr. Dirk Renschen took over the management of the testing process, which brought with it two major challenges: the enormous quantity of imported respiratory masks and the short period available to carry out high quality filtration tests. “But we did it!” Dr. Renschen says with pride. “Our team was on duty day and night to test and certify the respiratory masks.” Svenja Schneider also remembers the challenge: “Occasionally I felt like I was in the middle of a hurricane. But our team was incredibly committed to what they were doing. Most of them hadn’t known each other before – but the workflow worked very well. Even though we were often only connected online, we still worked very closely together.”

Alongside the awareness of having made a valuable contribution to the fight against the pandemic, a much broader perspective on the future has opened up. The threat of viral infections will remain, but the technology is evolving. In the foreseeable future, nanofibres could increase the protection offered by respiratory masks, new measurement techniques could detect ever finer particles – and perhaps in ten years’ time a quick glance at your smartphone will be enough to identify the viral load in a restaurant or classroom.

It doesn’t get steeper than this: our learning curve

Knowledge that knows no bounds:
The TÜV academies switch to online training

Trupti Dalal and Tamara Stübenrath are separated by some 8,000 kilometres – but they both faced the same challenge in 2020. Triggered by the coronavirus-related shutdown, both the TÜV India Training Academy and the TÜV NORD Akademie had to make a sudden and complete shift from face-to-face to online teaching. Tamara Stübenrath, who works in Stuttgart for the seminar organisation, reports: “Our team had to translate numerous training courses into new digital formats virtually overnight: webinars, live stream ­trainings and online conferences. Between April and December, we managed to train around 3,000 people in 365 training courses.”

The Indian training academy reports comparable figures, with around 6,000 people taking part in more than 200 training sessions from April to August. “Collective team efforts from our colleagues across the country under the guidance of our Managing Director Manish Bhuptani, helped in scaling up and achieving these figures,” explains Trupti Dalal. “Our programmes are now available online from everywhere, which benefits in saving travel time, costs and comfort of attending the training from the choice of your location.” The complex technical requirements were not unknown terrain for Digitalisation Manager Trupti Dalal. As an agile entity, the TÜV India Training Academy already had a well-developed digital training programme even before the pandemic. “But 2020 was ground-breaking, even for us,” she admits. “The coronavirus turbocharged our digitalisation activities.” Tamara Stübenrath agrees: "Some things that were considered impossible as recently as January became the norm just a few months later. One of them was the idea of virtual seminars in which a personal exchange takes place between trainers and specialist staff.”

The fact that digital training is possible from anywhere doesn’t only make things more convenient for participants and trainers. It is also profitable for companies which regu­larly train their employees to get the certificates they need for their work. Modern seminar technology allows even certification examinations to be sat online. In 2020, the learning curve was a steep one. And the upward trajectory continues. In the future, digital learning will not only be the norm, but its quality will also continue to improve, both technically and in terms of content.

Making the invisible visible

Knowledge derived from artificial intelligence:
How diving robots are enriching the world

The best ideas don’t just arise when you’re in the shower but when you’re confronted with a dilemma. It was the same in 2018, when TÜV Nord Baltik was commissioned with the internal inspection of a fuel tank. This required the complete emptying of the 5,000 cubic metre tank. This normally straightforward process turned out to be a logistical hurdle: the client’s intermediate storage facility was 30 kilometres away. Several hundred lorries were needed to get the fuel there. “This was time-consuming and costly – and also the moment when we had our idea for a diving robot that inspects tanks filled with liquid, without any need to pump the tank out or take it out of use,” recalls Oksana Leonidova, Managing Director of TÜV Nord Baltik and TÜV NORD Scandinavia. The robots which have been available until now often weigh well over 100 kilogrammes, as well as being inflexible and expensive to use. “Our innovation is due to be launched by June 2021: a smart robot that isn’t just lightweight, at about 17 kilogrammes, but also makes it easy to inspect tanks quickly, safely and cheaply – for customers all over the world,” says Ms Leonidova.

Andrejs Moisejenko, Head of the TÜV Nord Baltik Inspection Department, is developing this prototype as project leader – supported by an international team and in collaboration with a robot manufacturer. “Safety is paramount in product design to ensure absolute reliability of operation,” he stresses. The robot housing must be able to protect the sensitive sensors and electronic components from an extreme environment, for example from explosive fuels or chemicals. That is why ATEX certification, the European directive on explosion protection, is one of the basic steps. This will be performed by an independent testing body outside the TÜV NORD GROUP.

Going forward, the idea is for the diving robot also to be customisable so that tank monitoring can be precisely adapted to customer requirements. Other opportunities are also in prospect: experts watching the monitor, for example, will be able to capture the digital data in real time. Looking ahead, the plan is to integrate artificial intelligence (AI), which would enable the robot to learn independently, carry out certain analyses and submit evaluations of the measured values. This would allow any necessary action to be initiated more quickly and precisely: a valuable addition to the knowledge base for refineries, oil trading companies and the chemical industry – and a vision that may soon become reality.

Smart knowledge from a bird’s-eye view

Knowledge that helps the climate:
How a drone is contributing to environmentally friendly mobility

Commuters who heard a buzzing sound over the park-and-ride car park in Mettmann in the summer of 2020 and looked up at the sky would have spotted a drone at a height of about 40 metres. But what they could not have known was that this flying object was busy trying to make mobile life easier for them. The point is to make it easier to switch from cars to buses and trains – thanks to measuring systems that use an app to report whether and where parking spaces are currently available. But how good are such measurement systems? This was exactly the question that the Rhein-Ruhr Transport Association (VRR) asked TÜV NORD Mobilität.

The reliability of the system being used is crucial for the VRR if they are going to succeed in selling a switch to local park-and-ride schemes to commuters, thereby shifting much of the daily commute onto local public transport – and reducing the volume of urban traffic. As Heiko Ehrich, Head of Automotive Electronics at the Institute for Automotive Technology and Mobility (IFM), explains: “Before the VRR goes about technically upgrading its nearly 200 park-and-ride systems, it wants to know how accurate and real-time-capable the various measuring systems are. With the help of the drone, we were able to provide a reliable basis for decision-making – more efficient, less time-consuming and cheaper than, for example, fixed cameras.” The IFM launched the pilot project over a period of six weeks at two test car parks in Mettmann. Lars Tolksdorf, passionate drone pilot and dual student at TÜV NORD Mobilität, helped out with the project. “Our drones provided exact aerial images, which we then compared with the data from the measuring systems installed in the car park. Thanks to the high image quality, we were able to provide a sound analysis,” he reports. The only surprise was that the systems tested, such as magnetic field, camera and pressure sensors, often assessed the parking situation very differently. For example, a van parked at an angle or a tool lying on the ground was difficult for some measuring systems to interpret. Nonethe­less, the TÜV NORD team was able to explain clearly to the VRR how precise or error-prone the response of these systems would be in which situations.

Has the drone proved itself as a flying test instrument? Heiko Ehrich is convinced: “The method provided us with comprehensive and accurate data – and this in a very complex environment with relatively little effort. We can imagine many other areas of application, for example in the testing of self-driving cars.”