Implementation and Validation of Elastic Transformation Engine for Asset Administration Shells

The introduction of the Asset Administration Shell as an implementation concept for the Digital Twin of industrial assets, represents a crucial step toward achieving holistic interoperability between industrial hardware and software. However, the standardization process for data model structures, known as submodel templates, can be time-consuming. As a result, implementing and updating the Asset Administration Shell on the shop floor presents new challenges. One solution to address these challenges is the development of an Asset Administration Shell transformation engine for submodels. This engine can convert the structure of submodels in cases of submodel template revisions or modify the values of submodels for data preprocessing. The objective of this paper is to describe and implement a reference implementation of this concept of a transformation engine and to validate its implementation with real-world use cases. The implementation emphasizes a service-oriented software design, which allows the engine to be flexible and scalable according to workload demands. This approach ensures that transformed submodels can be provided based on the specific requirements of the shop floor. Validation consists of two test cases: the first simulates the live conversion of a machine's submodel that contains sensor data; the second simulates the data preprocessing of a time series of historical machine sensor data. Key performance indicators are identified to evaluate the engine's behavior during these tests and collect relevant data. The results are analyzed with a focus on whether the service-oriented design effectively manages the workload for the test cases and how the submodel transformation process can be improved in future updates of the implementation.