Faster Implementation Time Through Interoperability: Let’s Prove it!

Standardized connections are intended to reduce implementation time. This is achieved through approaches such as the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). Although there is a substantial amount of literature on how this can be accomplished with solutions like the AAS, there are no quantitative studies indicating the extent to which standardization can reduce implementation time. We aim to demonstrate this through an experiment. We believe it is important to engage the community in a critical discussion about the experiment design before we proceed with its execution. This paper examines two designs of experiments to measure implementation time in comparison to manufacture-specific interfaces. Many issues concerning the setup are open for discussion. It becomes clear that to achieve a valid measurement, multiple experiments must be conducted at various field levels and with different experimental subjects. We want to encourage researchers to engage this dialogue and these studies. Future research will execute the presented experiments.