Ready for the digital product passport How the administration shell promotes digital continuity in production

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FAULHABER Drive Systems

Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

The administration shell, as a central data hub, helps to drive the digitalization of processes in companies more efficiently and to simplify the communication between the involved subsystems. At the same time, it lays the foundation for the digital product passport.

Maximilian Kaiser is a team leader and product manager at Objective Partner and is responsible for the Industry 4.0 sector.

Peter Raber is a board member of Meta Level and primarily takes care of the sales and marketing sectors.

Dr. Markus Schoisswohl is an independent consultant in the field of Industry 4.0, digitization with a focus on administration shell and OPC-UA with Syn2tec e.U.

The administration shell, also known as Asset Administration Shell or AAS for short, makes it possible to standardize data from digital twins from development through production to reuse for different legacy systems, thus keeping them interoperable. This makes the AAS suitable for closing the gaps in consistency from engineering to production. On the other hand, with its submodels, it provides the optimal basis to be prepared for the requirements of the upcoming digital product passport (short: DPP).

Current limitations of digital continuity in production

Classical production processes are now naturally networked and usually allow a digital exchange of data from engineering to production. Most of these interfaces are proprietary, i.e., the communication is tailored to individual requirements or the integrated systems. The exchange of data, for example for outsourcing production capacity, is therefore often associated with additional effort. However, for the digitalization of manufacturing, it is necessary to use formats that are machine-readable for everyone, describing the properties and functions of machines and materials. As an example, one can imagine a bench drill, a drill chuck, drill bits, and the workpiece.

The administration shell forms the core of industrial digitalization within the framework of Smart Manufacturing. AAS are virtual representations, data hubs, and data centers of operational objects or assets such as machines, materials, processes, or resources that offer the ability to manage, control, and monitor information about these objects. Through AAS, this can be done more efficiently for both physical objects and digital services, leading to improved interoperability and functionality in the IoT. The standardization of the administration shell under IEC 63278-1:2023 further underlines this.

Practical relevance of the administration shell

Through so-called submodels, which summarize thematically related aspects of the asset, information within the administration shell can be accessed. Templates for the submodels are provided by the Industrial Digital Twin Association (short: IDTA). Within the IDTA, various working groups exist that create submodels for different use cases, e.g., digital typeplate, CO₂ footprint, handover documentation, or technical data.

Within the submodels, further information about the asset such as manufacturer information and documentation is included. These submodels are available on the IDTA website. The properties of the fields are semantically described, ensuring standardized machine readability and unambiguous interpretation.

Examples AAS Suite and BaSyx Enterprise

In the lifecycle of an administration shell, its creation and the integration of relevant sub-models are the top priority. There are various tools for this.

The open-source tool AASX-Package-Explorer can be used freely to create serialized administration shells.

The AAS Suite from Meta-Level Software with the AAS Designer offers a comfortable, assistive user interface for creating AAS. Within the AAS Suite, all submodels published by the IDTA are available for selection. In addition to modeling, editing, and validating the AAS, the AAS can be published on a marketplace, enriched with data, or passed on to third-party systems to then connect them to customer systems via the IDTA standard interfaces.

The Objective Partner's Basyx Enterprise framework enables the management of administration shells and offers a comprehensive range of tools and functions for digitalizing production processes and facilities. The use of Generative AI also allows the creation of administration shells to be accelerated, thus providing an efficient response to the demands of digital transformation. With the Basyx Enterprise designer tool, administration shells can be created, maintained, linked with standardized submodels, and made available to the customer via standard interfaces. Administration shells are provided to customers via the AAS Hub. Basyx Enterprise supports type 1, 2, and 3 administration shells.

AAS are a simple way to define digital twins for relevant assets. The extensive standardization ensures interoperability and communication throughout the various stages in the life of an asset: creation, commissioning, use, scrapping or re-use, and even potential transports between the stations can benefit.

A digital twin based on the AAS, which is established at the beginning of an asset's creation, can easily pass on its content completely or only in part from station to station and enrich it with further information at each station. Due to the flexibility of the AAS and the unlimited number of submodels contained in it, the mechanism is predefined and easy to understand or evaluate for everyone.

This standardized and universally readable representation of the digital twin is the ideal preparation for the Digital Product Passport coming from 2027. The information required in the DPP, the exact content of which is currently being defined, can be published via this. Already standardized submodels by IDTA such as the Digital Nameplate, Technical Data, and Handover Documentation already offer the possibility to meet the currently known requirements of the DPP.

This article originally appeared on our partner portal Industry of Things.