Consultings

Scope:

The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) scope is to create a digital representation of the assets within the industrial ecosystem. It is responsible for managing the asset’s behaviours and regulate any interaction among itself and external components. It enables interoperability as it can act as a “shell” for interacting with the asset in a protocol-unknown manner.

Although the AAS metamodel is standardized, the practical modeling of AAS data models remains significantly flexible. This flexibility while can be useful it also creates consistency issues since different organizations may introduce their AAS for similar assets in different ways. This problem occurs from the limited number of standardized submodels and causes difficulties in maintaining interoperability, comparing solutions and reusing models.

Approach:

The definition of the AAS platform and data models is linked with the type of assets that need to be modelled including the type of data that need to be circulated. The AAS can operate so as to standardize the exchange of information, indicating the position of data upon request. Regarding their implementation, there are various AAS platforms besides the DIMOFAC platform that can host these models, such as AASX Server, Eclipse Basyx, NOVAAS and FA³ST. Each platform provides different capabilities, and the selection of the most suitable one is crucial.

AAS, being a consistently improving technology, is now being more actively integrated into proactive control and monitoring of industrial operations and equipment. Expectations for the establishment of AAS V3 on the available platforms and technologies will further support that aspect. The proposed model aligns with these principles and proposes a flexible information model for operational control and monitoring of processes. Notably enables digital twin and proactive control services to be built on top of moulding and additive manufacturing processes, which has not precedence solution publicly available.

Outcome:

The AAS module is part of a market available platform that can be provided either as a standalone solution or by being part of an industrial platform through licensing.

Additional services can be considered:

• platform installation to host the deployment of the AAS models,
• server and model maintenance and enhancement,
• customization based on the characteristics of the studied use case,
• workshops for the deployment