Towards the digitization using asset administration shells

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is promoting the digitization of traditional manufacturing systems towards flexible, reconfigurable and intelligent factories based on Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). In this context, the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) provides guidelines to develop I4.0 compliant solutions based on industrial standards. As the main RAMI4.0 specification, the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is a standard digital representation of an industrial asset that plays a pivotal role in enabling interoperable communication among I4.0 components across the value chain. This paper provides an analysis of the current state-of-the-art of implementing AAS, discussing, amongst others, the key enabling technologies used to implement the AAS and the alignment of the research works found in the literature with the I4.0 components criteria.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05757/2020. The author Lucas Sakurada thanks the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, for the PhD Grant DFA/BD/9234/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Asset Administration Shell in Manufacturing: Applications and Relationship with Digital Twin

Within Industry 4.0 the communication between the physical and the cyber part of manufacturing system faces an ever-growing rise in complexity. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is an information framework, within Industry 4.0, that describes the technological features of an asset. It was created to present data and information in a structured and semantically defined format, allowing for interoperability. The work addresses the industrial implementation of AAS, where a systematic literature review has been carried out to investigate the features of the implemented AAS metamodel, and the tools used for the realization of the models. A study of the convergence present in literature between the AAS and Digital Twin (DT) has also been carried out. This paper presents a reference of AAS tools and information for industry practitioners, as well as suggestions for research gaps in the standardization of AAS information modelling. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors

NASA Technology Area 07: Human Exploration Destination Systems Roadmap

This paper gives an overview of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Chief Technologist (OCT) led Space Technology Roadmap definition efforts. This paper will given an executive summary of the technology area 07 (TA07) Human Exploration Destination Systems (HEDS). These are draft roadmaps being reviewed and updated by the National Research Council. Deep-space human exploration missions will require many game changing technologies to enable safe missions, become more independent, and enable intelligent autonomous operations and take advantage of the local resources to become self-sufficient thereby meeting the goal of sustained human presence in space. Taking advantage of in-situ resources enhances and enables revolutionary robotic and human missions beyond the traditional mission architectures and launch vehicle capabilities. Mobility systems will include in-space flying, surface roving, and Extra-vehicular Activity/Extravehicular Robotics (EVA/EVR) mobility. These push missions will take advantage of sustainability and supportability technologies that will allow mission independence to conduct human mission operations either on or near the Earth, in deep space, in the vicinity of Mars, or on the Martian surface while opening up commercialization opportunities in low Earth orbit (LEO) for research, industrial development, academia, and entertainment space industries. The Human Exploration Destination Systems (HEDS) Technology Area (TA) 7 Team has been chartered by the Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) to strategically roadmap technology investments that will enable sustained human exploration and support NASA s missions and goals for at least the next 25 years. HEDS technologies will enable a sustained human presence for exploring destinations such as remote sites on Earth and beyond including, but not limited to, LaGrange points, low Earth orbit (LEO), high Earth orbit (HEO), geosynchronous orbit (GEO), the Moon, near-Earth objects (NEOs), which > 95% are asteroidal bodies, Phobos, Deimos, Mars, and beyond. The HEDS technology roadmap will strategically guide NASA and other U.S. Government agency technology investments that will result in capabilities enabling human exploration missions to diverse destinations generating high returns on investments

The Habitat Demonstration Unit Project Overview

This paper will describe an overview of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led multi-center Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) Project. The HDU project is a "technology-pull" project that integrates technologies and innovations from numerous NASA centers. This project will be used to investigate and validate surface architectures, operations concepts, and requirements definition of various habitation concepts. The first habitation configuration this project will build and test is the Pressurized Excursion Module (PEM). This habitat configuration - the PEM - is based on the Constellation Architecture Scenario 12.1 concept of a vertically oriented habitat module. The HDU project will be tested as part of the 2010 Desert Research and Technologies Simulations (D-RATS) test objectives. The purpose of this project is to develop, integrate, test, and evaluate a habitat configuration in the context of the mission architectures and surface operation concepts. A multi-center approach will be leveraged to build, integrate, and test the PEM through a shared collaborative effort of multiple NASA centers. The HDU project is part of the strategic plan from the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) Directorate Integration Office (DIO) and the Lunar Surface Systems Project Office (LSSPO) to test surface elements in a surface analog environment. The 2010 analog field test will include two Lunar Electric Rovers (LER) and the PEM among other surface demonstration elements. This paper will describe the overall objectives, its various habitat configurations, strategic plan, and technology integration as it pertains to the 2010 and 2011 field analog tests. To accomplish the development of the PEM from conception in June 2009 to rollout for operations in July 2010, the HDU project team is using a set of design standards to define the interfaces between the various systems of PEM and to the payloads, such as the Geology Lab, that those systems will support. Scheduled activities such as early fit-checks and the utilization of a habitat avionics test bed prior to equipment installation into PEM are planned to facilitate the integration process

A Knowledge Graph Based Integration Approach for Industry 4.0

The fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0 (I40) aims at creating smart factories employing among others Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Realizing smart factories according to the I40 vision requires intelligent human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication. To achieve this communication, CPS along with their data need to be described and interoperability conflicts arising from various representations need to be resolved. For establishing interoperability, industry communities have created standards and standardization frameworks. Standards describe main properties of entities, systems, and processes, as well as interactions among them. Standardization frameworks classify, align, and integrate industrial standards according to their purposes and features. Despite being published by official international organizations, different standards may contain divergent definitions for similar entities. Further, when utilizing the same standard for the design of a CPS, different views can generate interoperability conflicts. Albeit expressive, standardization frameworks may represent divergent categorizations of the same standard to some extent, interoperability conflicts need to be resolved to support effective and efficient communication in smart factories. To achieve interoperability, data need to be semantically integrated and existing conflicts conciliated. This problem has been extensively studied in the literature. Obtained results can be applied to general integration problems. However, current approaches fail to consider specific interoperability conflicts that occur between entities in I40 scenarios. In this thesis, we tackle the problem of semantic data integration in I40 scenarios. A knowledge graphbased approach allowing for the integration of entities in I40 while considering their semantics is presented. To achieve this integration, there are challenges to be addressed on different conceptual levels. Firstly, defining mappings between standards and standardization frameworks; secondly, representing knowledge of entities in I40 scenarios described by standards; thirdly, integrating perspectives of CPS design while solving semantic heterogeneity issues; and finally, determining real industry applications for the presented approach. We first devise a knowledge-driven approach allowing for the integration of standards and standardization frameworks into an Industry 4.0 knowledge graph (I40KG). The standards ontology is used for representing the main properties of standards and standardization frameworks, as well as relationships among them. The I40KG permits to integrate standards and standardization frameworks while solving specific semantic heterogeneity conflicts in the domain. Further, we semantically describe standards in knowledge graphs. To this end, standards of core importance for I40 scenarios are considered, i.e., the Reference Architectural Model for I40 (RAMI4.0), AutomationML, and the Supply Chain Operation Reference Model (SCOR). In addition, different perspectives of entities describing CPS are integrated into the knowledge graphs. To evaluate the proposed methods, we rely on empirical evaluations as well as on the development of concrete use cases. The attained results provide evidence that a knowledge graph approach enables the effective data integration of entities in I40 scenarios while solving semantic interoperability conflicts, thus empowering the communication in smart factories

Exploring Cloud Adoption Possibilities for the Manufacturing Sector: A Role of Third-Party Service Providers

As the manufacturing sector strides towards digitalization under the influence of Industry 4.0, cloud services have emerged as the new norm, driving change and innovation in this rapidly transforming landscape. This study investigates the possibilities of cloud adoption in the manufacturing sector by developing a conceptual model to identify suitable cloud-based solutions and explores the role of third-party service providers in aiding manufacturers throughout their cloud adoption journey. The research methods consist of a comprehensive literature review of the manufacturing industry, digital transformation, cloud computing, etc., followed by qualitative analyses of industrial benchmarks case studies and an investigation into an application of the developed model to a hypothetical food manufacturing company as an example. This study indicates that cloud adoption can yield substantial benefits in the manufacturing sector, including operational efficiency, cost reduction, and innovation, etc. The study concludes that the developed conceptual model provides a practical framework to identify the most suitable cloud-based solutions during the cloud adoption process in the manufacturing context. In addition, third-party service providers like Capgemini are capable of not only filling the technical gaps but also consulting strategic directions and innovations for their client organizations, hence playing a vital role in driving the industrial digital transformation process. With an extensive mapping of their capabilities, a set of recommendations intended to assist Capgemini in enhancing capabilities and improving competitive performance in the market has been offered