The administration shell (AAS), the digital product passport and the digital type plate offer promising approaches for advancing digitalization in the industry. But how do experts assess their market maturity and benefits for SMEs?
Potential and challenges of the administration shell (AAS)
The asset administration shell is a central component in the context of Industry 4.0 and digital twins. It ensures that information about a product or machine is made available in a standardized and structured manner. According to an industry expert, the concept of the asset administration shell is promising, but not yet fully developed. “The basic idea is undoubtedly good and offers great potential, especially in areas such as service, sales and customer satisfaction,” they say. However, it is not yet ready for the market, which makes widespread implementation difficult.
Digital product passport - a first step
The digital product passport currently only exists in a rudimentary form. It currently only covers small areas, but still offers an entry point for companies that have not yet dealt intensively with digitalization. The product passport is a first step towards creating transparency along the entire value chain. Companies can use it to provide a wide range of information on products and machines digitally, which will increase efficiency and interoperability in the long term.
Implementation and market challenges
Despite the potential, there are considerable challenges when it comes to practical implementation. “The introduction of such standards is often difficult and frequently leads to frustration,” says the expert. Historical examples show that theoretically sensible standards often meet with resistance in practice. Even today, it is unrealistic for 60,000 experts worldwide to work uniformly according to one standard. Despite these challenges, there is a great willingness to develop and find solutions.
Implementation in automation technology - first steps and successes
Even though the complete implementation of the asset administration shell is still pending, initial successes have already been achieved. For example, the AutomationML standard is being used for data exchange and interoperability and FMU/FMI for simulation. These standards are already working perfectly and are being actively used in mechanical engineering. Other standards such as STEP, native CAD data and DLLs are also already part of the processes and are helping to increase efficiency.
The roadmap - outlook for the next steps
Further automation is planned for the future in companies such as machineering, in particular the simulation models in the machineering store. Information from the administration shell is to be used here to reduce the maintenance effort. However, the testing effort remains a challenge. Even if automation through FMI simplifies the simulation, manual tests are still necessary to ensure that the delivered components and firmware meet expectations.
One promising approach is the provision of the Vendor Package for automation partners, with which they can independently present their components as a model in the Engineering Store. This should happen regardless of whether the models are based on FMI or DLL. However, this requires a standardized data format.
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