Concept and implementation of a communication driven Administration Shell related to efficient devices in Industry 4.0 communication systems

A key element of Industry 4.0 networks is the fusion of operation technology (OT) and information technology (IT) into one flexible, high-performance and convergent network. Major technologies used in future networks will be time-sensitive networking to achieve powerful data transportation and OPC UA to build interoperable applications. Using these benefits requires devices, which represent their data capabilities and requirements with a meaningful asset administration shell. This contribution combines the aspects of converged networks with devices that former operated in OT networks. Focus of this work is to elaborate a concept based on asset administration shells with a data driven view considering the challenges of IIoT. This includes a common functional interface for production devices to provide and request data, time-sensitive streams, and an interface for network specific configuration aspects. Additionally, this paper depicts a concept implementation based on an industrial use case, which uses the technologies TSN and OPC UA. Therefore, time-sensitive devices with switched-endpoint capabilities are used. Those devices will be enhanced to be utilized in future converged networks by using the proposed asset administration shell approach and enable a demand-oriented data exchange and data stream.