Digital Twin Standardization And Interoperability as Cornerstones of Digital Transformation

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Open Industry 4.0 Alliance

FAULHABER Drive Systems

Wuxi InfiMotion Technology Co., Ltd.

New approaches are needed for the digitization of industry. The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance sees the solution in digital twins, based on the asset administration shell.

Ekrem Yigitdöl is the managing director of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance.

The advancing digitization in the industry, especially within the framework of Industry 4.0, requires new approaches and concepts to meet the increasing demands. A central topic in this context is the standardization and interoperability of digital processes and data.

The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance plays a crucial role in advancing the development and implementation of common standards to promote digital transformation in the industry. A central component of these efforts is the digital twin, which allows products and factories to be represented digitally, thus bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds.

Digital Twins And Asset Administration Shell

The administration shell is the home of all digital twinWithin the OI4, component manufacturers and software providers discuss intensively the challenges and visions in the field of digital transformation. The digital twin plays a key role in this. It enables comprehensive and standardized product information, which is increasingly demanded in the industry. OI4 has already realized the implementation of digital twins in many of its projects based on Asset Administration Shells (AAS). The AAS forms the technical backbone for the uniform description and management of digital twins and is regarded as a central standard for semantic interoperability in Industry 4.0. The administration shell covers the entire lifecycle of an asset and integrates existing Industry 4.0 standards while also providing flexibility for future requirements.

A special feature is the division of information into submodels that represent specific properties and capabilities, known as "skills." This structure allows for a distributed information architecture where data can be made accessible across company boundaries. This not only promotes internal process optimization but also enables system-wide data exchange.

Collaboration as the Key to Success

The OI4 sees itself as a pioneer of a collaborative technological future. In the past, companies often developed individual solutions, which hindered widespread market penetration. However, to successfully tackle the challenges of digitalization, cross-company collaboration is necessary. The OI4 therefore focuses on the standardization of the digital twin and complements the definition work of the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA). This collaboration is crucial to achieve sustainable progress in the digital age.

Practical Implementation And Future Perspectives

To put theory into practice, five component manufacturers have joined forces. The companies AS-Schneider, Dunkermotoren, Endress+Hauser, ifm, and Kübler come from the OI4 supplier working group. As one of the first activities, the working group, supported by software developer Conplement, took the first step towards AAS and the digital twin. This first step was followed by further projects, and much is already planned for the future.

The AAS offers more than just simple data exchange. It enables the modeling of capabilities, skills, states, events, and rules. This allows the AAS to contain all the information required for the production of a product and to interact with the AAS of the production facilities via publish and subscribe mechanisms. Keyword: Type 3 administration shell. The goal was to provide standardized, digital, and interoperable basic product data. By focusing on the AAS as a standard, a path was chosen that offers investment security. It also allows regulatory requirements to be met and internal processes to be optimized.

A look into the future shows that additional use cases make the technological approach even more interesting. This is particularly true in light of increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for products from the EU, such as the digital product passport (DPP), the carbon footprint, the Supply Chain Act, and the Cyber Resilience Act. These requirements necessitate extensive provision of product information, especially for medium-sized companies. To meet these demands, a standardized bundling and provision of product-related data is necessary. Additionally, digital value-added services, including successful monetization, offer further potential for companies.

A central aspect of further development is the question of data sovereignty. Component manufacturers often face the challenge that the data required for analysis lies with the operators of the facilities in which the components are used. To overcome this hurdle, the concept of the AAS infrastructure is being further developed, focusing on both cloud layers and experimental implementations. The implementation of these proofs of concept is planned, among other things, based on the Basyx SOK open-source framework, supported by Node-Red flows and individually developed services.

Use of AAS in Companies

Through these measures and the close collaboration of the aforementioned companies, a platform was developed. It enables companies to generate, host, manage, and, of course, provide standardized digital twins based on the AAS concepts in large volumes to their respective customers. As a result, members of the OI4 receive guidance for implementing their solutions based on the AAS concept to increase acceptance and accelerate the introduction of the AAS concept in the OI4 community.

Third parties also benefit from this pioneering work, as the platform is now available on the market as a finished SaaS product, thereby significantly reducing the technological entry barrier for companies starting with AAS.

In the long term, the AAS approach could lead to a connected and collaborative Industry 4.0, where information is exchanged across different companies and software landscapes. This offers potential for the development of new asset-centric value-added services, enabled by the use of standardized and optimized AAS submodels.

Digital Twins Pave the Way to Industry 4.0

The introduction and application of the AAS marks a significant advancement towards an interoperable and digitally connected Industry 4.0. Through close collaboration within the OI4, standardization is being advanced to effectively address the challenges of digital transformation.

This aligns with international initiatives like Catena-X and Factory-X, which also aim to create secure and cooperative dataspaces. The journey of the OI4 project group impressively demonstrates that the vision of a standardized digital twin is achievable and shows the way to the future of Industry 4.0.

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