Unified Namespace and Asset Administration Shell: A Winning Combination for Digital Production

Modern production systems demands advanced data networking. Concepts like the unified namespace help in reconfiguring the data flow of different hierarchy levels into a centralized data space. This data space connects data stakeholders, including Manufacturing Execution System and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems on one side, and assets, sensors, and actuators on the other. The lack of standardization leads to individualistic solutions in the existing solutions. The concept of the Asset Administration Shell provides standardization for asset-specific data. This paper presents the design and implementation of a "AAS-based Unified Namespace" concept leveraging the Asset Administration Shell, along with a standardized structure based on ISA-95. The focus of this work is on the effective handling of event data for its relevance in real-time decision-making. Therefore, we focus on the effective handling of event data.