An AAS-based Architecture for Plug and Produce and Order-Driven Production

Technological advances in Industry 4.0 pave the way for mass personalization. Indeed, technologies like the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and autonomous robots help optimize production processes, reduce labor, and increase manufacturing flexibility, thus enabling customers to order personalized products at lower costs. Consequently, the order-driven production (ODP) strategy has evolved. It now considers not only the quantity of products in each production order but also the characteristics of the product unit. A manufacturing system adaptable to characteristic changes of different product units must be able to add, remove, and replace production equipment quickly and automatically, with no negative impact on its current production process. This ability is also known as Plug and Produce (PnP). The main challenge in PnP lies in the heterogeneity of production equipment, which differs in features, functions, and communication protocols. Asset Administration Shell (AAS), the industrial-grade standard emerging in Industry 4.0, implies an efficient approach to addressing this challenge using AAS digital twins. Unfortunately, it lacks sufficient detail regarding ODP. Thus, this paper proposes a new architecture, named XAAS, which relies on the AAS standard and extends it with additional features and services to address PnP and ODP.