Toward the Plug-and-Produce Capability for Industry 4.0 An Asset Administration Shell Approach

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution, also termed Industry 4.0 (I4.0), will digitalize manufacturing operations and decentralize them from the shop floor to the office and across entire enterprise networks [1]. The proposed system-level digitalization solutions for I4.0 include cyber-physical systems [2] and digital twins [3]. Standardized I4.0 technologies are urgently required to change industry and guide market usage. The asset administration shell (AAS) of the I4.0 component [4] is a German symbolic model that is under development as an international standard in International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) project 63278-1. Not all engineers, researchers, and entrepreneurs have a basic knowledge of the AAS. Very few understand how to employ an AAS in practice. This article uses AASs to implement an I4.0 scenario, thus plug and produce (PnP) of industrial field devices. A three-layer, AAS-based implementation of PnP manufacture in line with I4.0 is developed. The synergy is to show that the AAS may help expedite I4.0 digitalization and propel its applications forward.