Designing a material analysis collaboratory for the process industry

Cost and efficiency are important incentives for academic oriented collaboratories, where researchers and analysts can work and experiment with advanced remote equipment. Such collaboratories are not suitable for industrial use, because they include experimental instruments instead of of-the-shelf instruments, and because industry requires other security and reliability implementation. This paper presents an industrial collaboratory that aims to support the daily work of material analysts. It supports natural collaboration between analysts and with customers and supports remote control of sophisticated of-the-shelf instruments. The paper includes a sketch of the technical architecture and elaborates on business models for commercial exploitation of the collaboratory