Intelligent instrumentation: a quality challenge

<p>This is a reissue of a paper which appeared in ACTA IMEKO 1988, Proceedings of the 11th Triennial World Congress of the International Measurement Confederation (IMEKO), "Instrumentation for the 21st century", 16.-21.10.1988, Houston, pp. 337-345.</p><p>After a review and description of current trends in the design of electronic measurement and analytical instrumentation, changes in its application and use, and of associated quality issues, this paper deals with new quality issues emerging from the expected increase of artificial intelligence impact on system design and implementation strategies. The concept of knowledge quality in all its aspects (i.e. knowledge levels, representation, storage, and processing) is identified as the key new issue. Discussion of crucial knowledge quality attributes and associated assurance strategies suggests the need to enrich the assurance sciences and technologies by the methods and tools of applied epistemology. Described results from current research and investigation, together with first applications of artificial intelligence to particular analytical instruments, lead to conclusion that the conceptual framework of quality management is, in general, adequate for successful resolution of all quality issues associated with intelligent instrumentation.</p>