Asset Administration Shell for PLC Representation Based on IEC 61131–3

Abstract

In the Reference Architecture Model for Industrie 4.0, the concept of Asset Administration Shell is presented as the corner stone of interoperability. Asset Administration Shell is defined as a digital representation of an asset able to provide information about the asset including documents, properties, parameters, and functionalities, all organized in a consistent way. Information provided by an Asset Administration Shell can be adopted during whole life cycle of a production system, from its development until its disposal. At the lowest level of the hierarchy of a production system, usually automation and control programs are executed by Programmable Logic Controllers, whose programming technology is based on IEC 61131-3 standard. The IEC 61131-3 programs, the Programmable Logic Controllers where they run, and the real plant controlled are closely related. Considering the life cycle of a production system, the description of IEC 61131-3 programs and the relevant relationships with the plant should be clearly defined, leading to several advantages for example regarding the definition of testing plant operations, maintenance operations at run-time and reconfiguration process of the plant. What is missing for the realization of what said so far is a standard way to realize this description. For this reason, the paper presents an Asset Administration Shell model able to represent IEC 61131-3 programs and the relevant relationships with Programmable Logic Controllers and each device of the controlled plant.

Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Modelling Submodels in the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell

“…The Nameplate Submodel [4] and Technical Data Submodel [3] are widely used for machine AASs. An example Submodel for PLCOpen [20] has been published outside of the Platform Industry 4.0 initiative. The process of standardizing machine skills and capabilities has been described in [10], [21], although a Submodel implementation is not provided.…”

A Systematic Modelling Procedure to Design Agent-Oriented Control to Coalition of Capabilities - In the Context of I4.0 as Virtual Assets (AAS)

“…Different works provide ways of contributing to the implementation of the DT [1][2][3]7,11,18]; however, the proposals generally implement specific cases, such as searching for equipment, connecting assets to the cloud [1,23], digitizing PLCs [24] and, the tractability of assets [25]. However, it was impossible to notice works that describe a methodology to enable the concept of an active object in AAS, allowing it to understand its attributes and collaborate with the connected components to form societies in the connected world.…”

“…The [24] presents greater alignment with the stages of development of a production process in the context of representation of the Asset (Programmable Logical Controller -PLC) through the concept of Asset Administration Shell (AAS). The article shows an AAS metamodel to represent a PLC program and its relationships with other entities in the controlled plant.…”

A Model for Predictive Maintenance Based on Asset Administration Shell

“…Our proposal leverage on the adoption of AAS to addresses (2) and defines modules of generic functionalities for PdM (where some of them are implemented in specific AAS submodels to address (1). Authors already adopted the AAS to abstract the complexity of plant configuration [26], but this proposal presents an approach for the representation of a PdM solution in terms of generic and technology-independent functionalities where AASs are used mainly in brownfield to achieve interoperability among devices.…”

“…Both properties and functions are grouped in so-called submodels, each of which describes a specific aspect relevant to an asset (e.g., energy efficiency, positioning, documentation, drilling, maintenance, etc.). The aim is the standardization of a submodel for every aspect of an asset [54], but up to now, no standardized submodel has been provided, even though a lot of proposals have started to appear in the literature [17,26,55,56].…”