With capabilities like “batch size 1” custom production and “plug and produce” production line modifications on the fly, Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing how plant assets are organized and used, making production lines not only more flexible, but also more resilient to unforeseen events.
Digital twins that adapt in real time to changes to the plant can be used to develop and deploy the digital, connected assets needed for reconfiguration, supervision, and predictive maintenance. Currently AAS (IEC 63278-1) is the only independent standard for plant digitalization.
An Asset Administration Shell, or AAS (a standardized digital representation of an asset), breaks each piece of plant equipment and software down into:
This manufacturing-industry standard, equivalent to the USB (universal serial bus) standard, is supported by manufacturing-industry groups Industria 4.0 in Italy, Platform 4.0 in Germany, and Alliance Industrie du Futur in France, and is well on its way to becoming the international standard for Industry 4.0.
One challenge, however, is that there are not many engineering tools available for AAS implementation, and those that do exist do not have all of the necessary features. End-to-end tools with graphical interfaces for modeling, automated deployment, standardized communication with plant equipment, and graphical representations of the assets connected are needed.
CEA-List and German research institute DFKI contributed their know-how in model-driven engineering (MDE) to Papyrus4Manufacturing, which offers:
AAS-compliant Papyrus4Manufacturing can be used to design and deploy digital interfaces in the factory. Plant assets, products, and processes can be modeled, deployed, managed, and supervised inside the software.
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