Hannover Messe 2024 What's happening around the digital twin

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At Hannover Messe 2024, much revolved around artificial intelligence; but the topic of digital twin and administration shell also played a big role, as the following examples show.

The major initiative Industrial Digital Twin Association e.V. (IDTA) used the Hanover Fair to present progress and innovations around the administration shell and the digital twin based on it; the further spread was also in focus. Representatives from ten companies from the automation, mechanical engineering and software development sectors as well as IDTA met to jointly initiate further steps for the widespread implementation of the interoperable digital twin for data spaces in engineering. The working group consisting of participants from Siemens, Bausch+Ströbel, Bosch Rexroth, Cadenas, Festo, Harting, Sick, Phoenix Contact, Wago, Engel and IDTA meets regularly to realize industrial use cases based on the administration shell. By now, the initiative is implementing the fourth use case and is showing remarkable results in reducing time and costs compared to previous processes.

Digitaler Zwilling

IDTA zeigt 50 Lösungen aus der Industrie

To fully exploit the potential of the industrial digital twin based on the AAS, a widespread adaptation of the standard in the breadth of the industry is crucial. The initiative under the auspices of the IDTA has recently developed a use case for cross-company data exchange in engineering using Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and tool-side support across various data spaces.

Significant time savings in engineering

Results from use cases for the use of the AAS in engineering and PLM tools show a cost and time saving of up to 67%, in the PLM processes of the Product Change Notification up to 79%. The significant savings compared to previous processes are due to standardized information models, called submodels, which provide and integrate information about components in a standardized and automated manner. Error-prone manual data integration processes are completely replaced. Valuable and highly qualified work resources focus on value-adding activities.

Some voices on this:

• Dr. Mark Krieg, Vice President Development, Industrial Hydraulics, Bosch Rexroth: "The fast and cross-manufacturer data exchange is the basis for the long-term securing of the competitiveness of industrial companies. For this to succeed, uniform data standards and technical systems are needed that can generate, distribute and process this data. Bosch Rexroth automatically provides digital twins for more than 880,000 product types and over 300 million product instances. Relevant data are bundled in the administration shell of a product. Compliance with this industry standard is the prerequisite for seamless, scalable and secure data exchange. In a next step, we at Bosch Rexroth are working on making this information available directly in the engineering systems of our customers. This enables effective and efficient use of product data."

• Jürgen Heimbach, CEO Cadenas: "Cadenas 3Dfindit.com currently provides over 8 million AASX models for type-based download. Together with Bosch Rexroth and Wittenstein, the administration shells have already been enriched with instance information. Regarding the download behavior on 3Dfindit.com, we can see a clear trend that the administration shell is gaining importance."

• Gerhard Borho, Board of Information Technology and Digitalisation, Festo SE & Co. KG: "Festo will provide digital twins as administration shells at various levels of expansion for machine builders and operators. This applies to both new products and existing products. Because Digital First is the future of engineering. In addition to technical product data such as manuals, we will also support virtual commissioning for selected components. For our sustainability goals, the product carbon footprint will be transparently displayed."

• Norbert Gemmeke, Managing Director Harting Electric: "The 'digital twin' in its form as an administration shell is at the center of Harting's activities in the context of the All Electric Society: The AAS is both the central carrier for the interoperability of all our processes along the entire value chain as well as the life cycle of our production facilities and products and thus enables the future-proof sustainability of a circular economy. This interoperability can only be achieved through standards and norms. To this end, Harting is committed in the IDTA to jointly develop administration shell models as well as in the international standard creation at ISO & IEC. We therefore support future development through active participation and implementation of the administration shell developed in the IDTA within our worldwide organization and for all connectivity products and related 'Digital Services'. We see the integration of native AAS interfaces in the Siemens PLM platform Teamcenter as the most important insight from this IDTA project 'Digital Component': Only through this is a seamless and therefore cost-effective infrastructure for the realization of digital twins possible."

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• Dr. Frank Possel-Dölken, Chief Digital Officer, Phoenix Contact: "As an industrial company, we need to be able to implement data flows between several companies simply and cost-effectively. What we need for this is a standardized data container, namely the AAS, API’s, and general integration into commercial IT systems."

• Dr. Niels Syassen, member of the board of Sick AG and responsible for technology and digitalization: "In recent years, we have made great progress together in implementing the numerous benefits of the administration shell in industrial applications, e.g. by providing shells at the type level for almost our entire portfolio in the Sick Asset Hub. Together with our partners, we look forward to taking the Asset Administration Shell to the next level and helping customers simplify and optimize their business processes, e.g. in qualifying Product Change Notifications. We are convinced of the business potential."

• Rainer Brehm, CEO Factory Automation at Siemens: "Siemens Xcelerator is a central part of Siemens' strategy to accelerate our customers' digital transformation. In doing so, Siemens creates an industrial ecosystem based on the principles of interoperability, flexibility, and openness. The administration shell (AAS) is a key technology for the seamless exchange of digital twin data along the entire value chain. The AAS implements all principles of Xcelerator and is therefore ideal for tracking the entire product lifecycle. Within Manufacturing-X, the AAS is set as a basic technology and anchored across all use cases. That's why we actively promote the application of AAS in the industry as one of the consortium leaders in the Factory-X project." At the Hannover Fair, the company showcased specific AAS developments, for example in connection with DPP4.0 first AAS for automation products, the software integration of the AAS into the TIA Portal, Teamcenter, the Industrial Edge application Industrial Information Hub, and the Siemens Battery Passport.

• Dr. Heiner Lang, CEO of Wago: "At Wago, we consider the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) to be a central tool for the technical implementation of our digital twin. Therefore, we published over 18,000 administration shells at the SPS fair 2023. In the coming years, we will provide the AAS for all our articles. In addition, we will specifically implement further use cases of the AAS, which will make both our internal processes and the processes of our customers more efficient on a sustainable basis."

Compare products based on their digital twin

VDMA and Meta-Level Software AG presented the AAS Compare Tool for comparing products based on their digital twin at the Hannover Messe. With the freely usable Compare Tool application, it is possible to compare alternative products based on their associated Asset Administration Shell (AAS), allowing for a precise selection through simple and effective comparison.

An essential part of digitalisation in the industry is the networking of objects ("assets") and their communication in the "Internet of Things" (IoT). The Asset Administration Shell plays a central role as a sector-neutral standard for the communication of "assets" and contains - as an implementation of the Digital Twin - all information that characterises an asset's features and behaviours. The AAS Suite developed by Meta-Level Software AG, which includes the AAS Designer and other tools, enables the easy and fast creation, editing and validation of Asset Administration Shells as well as their provision on the AAS Marketplace.

• A new feature of the AAS Suite is the Compare Tool, which makes it possible to compare products based on their digital twin (AAS). Currently, the submodels "Technical Data", "Product Information" and a part of the "Digital Type Label" are taken into account. The use of the IDTA-compliant API allows these comparisons for AAS from repositories of various providers, provided they also implement the IDTA API.

• Another new feature of the AAS Suite is a validation function in the AAS Designer. This function ensures the syntactic correctness of an AAS according to the IDTA Meta-Model V3.x. This function lists all existing errors and directly offers the option to correct the errors at the same place.

Beneficial use of the administration shell

The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) offers great potential for machine and plant manufacturers, their component suppliers and customers, as a cross-manufacturer standard for the digital twin. Contact Software is continuously working on the further development of the administration shell in the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) and other projects, and presented new AAS use cases for Industry 4.0 at the Hannover Messe 2024.

Contact already demonstrated in 2023 how companies can import and export first AAS submodels at the push of a button using its Elements for IoT platform. Since then, the software provider has implemented further IDTA specifications. Now, structured information relating to an asset's installation, a classified description of its technical properties, the product carbon footprint, transfer documents as well as context-related operational data can be securely and reliably exchanged via the AAS.

• Clear navigation through new widget: A new widget for the Elements for IoT dashboards provides an overview of all "active" and "inactive" AAS submodels of an asset and simplifies information exchange between companies. Users access the AAS Type 2 REST endpoint of the administration shell or its submodels directly via the widget, having the option to download or upload the respective submodel to update it or activate a non-existent submodel.

• Creation and updating of assets: The creation or modification of assets has also been extended to include the specification of an AAS REST endpoint. The desired AAS information is provided by the Universal Classification of the Elements platform via the Digital Type Label and the serial number contained therein. If an asset already exists with the serial number, a query will be made as to whether it should be updated. This extension is particularly valuable in maintenance, when outdated or defective components in machine tools need to be replaced.

• Export of time series data: Using the "Time Series Data to AAS" feature, the same-named submodel is automatically filled with the metadata and time series values of an asset. For this purpose, Contact Elements for IoT offers two ways to provide the measured values: direct Rest access to the selected time series area and, in addition, a derived JSON file that is stored on the Digital Twin. Within the context of production, for example, data can be provided for quality assurance tasks at the end of a production line (End of Line Test).

Nvidia announces APIs to support software tools for industrial digital twins.

With Omniverse Cloud APIs, Nvidia aims to extend the reach of the platform for creating industrial digital twin applications and workflows to the entire ecosystem of software manufacturers. The five new programming interfaces allow developers to directly integrate Omniverse core technologies into existing Digital Twin design and automation software applications or into their simulation workflows for testing and validating autonomous machines such as robots or self-driving vehicles.

Manufacturers of industrial software that have incorporated Omniverse Cloud APIs into their software portfolio include Ansys, Cadence, Dassault Systèmes for its 3D-Excite brand, Hexagon, Microsoft, Rockwell Automation, Siemens, and Trimble.

Everything that is produced will have digital twins. Omniverse is the operating system for creating and operating physically realistic digital twins.

Jensen Huang, Gründer und CEO von Nvidia

The five new Omniverse Cloud APIs, which can be used individually or together, include:

• USD Render: creates fully ray-traced Nvidia RTX renderings from Open USD data

• USD Write: allows users to modify and interact with Open USD data

• USD Query: enables scene queries and interactive scenarios

• USD Notify: tracks USD changes and provides updates

• Omniverse Channel: connects users, tools, and worlds to enable cross-scene collaboration.