Table Of ContentTowards a Semantic Administrative Shell for
Industry 4.0 Components
Irla´n Grangel-Gonza´lez∗, Lavdim Halilaj∗, Go¨khan Coskun∗, So¨ren Auer∗, Diego Collarana∗, Michael Hoffmeister†
∗Enterprise Information Systems, University of Bonn, Germany
{grangel,halilaj,coskun,auer,collaran}@cs.uni-bonn.de
†Festo AG & Co. KG, Germany
{[email protected]}
6
1 Abstract—Intheengineeringandmanufacturingdomain,there software processes [2]. In order to do so, they use various
0 iscurrentlyanatmosphereofdeparturetoaneweraofdigitized types of available data, digital communication facilities, and
2 production. In different regions, initiatives in these directions services [3].
are known under different names, such as industrie du futur in
n France,industrialinternetintheUSorIndustrie4.0inGermany. Whilethevisionofdigitizingproductionandmanufacturing
a While the vision of digitizing production and manufacturing gained much traction lately, it is still relatively unclear how
J
gained much traction lately, it is still relatively unclear how this vision can be actually be implemented with concrete
2 this vision can actually be implemented with concrete standards standards and technologies. The physical network connection
1 and technologies. Within the German Industry 4.0 initiative,
problem is meanwhile largely solved using technologies such
the concept of an Administrative Shell was devised to respond
as Profibus/Profinet [4] and OPC-UA [5]. However, the much
] to these requirements. The Administrative Shell is planned to
E provideadigitalrepresentationofallinformationbeingavailable more challenging problem is to make smart industrial devices
S about and from an object which can be a hardware system or a able to communicate and understand each other as a prereq-
s. software platform. In this paper, we present an approach to de- uisite for cooperation scenarios. To address this problem, we
c velopsuchadigitalrepresentationbasedonsemanticknowledge needtechniquesandstandardsforrepresentingandexchanging
[ representationformalismssuchasRDF,RDFSchemaandOWL.
We present our concept of a Semantic I4.0 Component which information,dataandknowledgebetweendevicesparticipating
2 addresses the communication and comprehension challenges in in manufacturing and production processes. Such standards
v Industry4.0scenariosusingsemantictechnologies.Ourapproach must be flexible to accommodate new features, usage sce-
6 is illustrated with a concrete example showing its benefits in a narios, cover multiple domains, device categories, and bridge
5 real-world use case.
organizationalboundaries.Mostimportantly,theymustbeable
5
1 I. INTRODUCTION toevolveseamlesslyovertimetofacilitatetheswiftrealization
0 of new features and scenarios as they become apparent.
. The dynamic of today’s world imposes new challenges to
1 WithintheIndustry4.0initiative,theconceptofanAdminis-
the enterprises. The globalization, the ubiquitous presence of
0 trativeShellwasdevisedtorespondtotheserequirements.The
6 the internet and the development of hardware systems are AdministrativeShellisplannedtoprovideadigitalrepresenta-
1 someofthetechnologicalimprovementsthatprovokechanges
tionofallinformation(andservices)beingavailableaboutand
v: everywhere. In the engineering and manufacturing domain, from a physical manufacturing component. In this article, we
i there is currently an atmosphere of departure to a new era of present an approach to develop such a digital representation
X
digitized production. In different regions, initiatives in these
based on semantic knowledge representation formalisms such
r directions are known under different names, such as industrie
a as RDF, RDF-Schema and OWL. The advantages of such an
du futur in France, industrial internet in the US or Industrie
RDF-based approach are:
4.0 in Germany.
Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is a term coined in Germany to refer • Identification. The use of URI/IRIs provides an decen-
tralized, holistic, extensible global identification scheme
to the fourth industrial revolution. This is understood as the
for all relevant entities either physical or abstract
application of concepts such as Internet of Things (IoS),
Cyber-physical Systems (CPS), the Internet of Services (IoS) • Integration The simple, but at the same time expressive
statement-centricRDFdatamodelenablestherepresenta-
and data-driven architectures in the real industry. With ap-
tionoffacts,rawdata,schema,provenanceandmeta-data
proximately the similar meaning, in North America, the term
information in a unified manner.
Industrial Internet has been created. This term is very similar
to I4.0, but the application is broader than industrial produc- • Coherence Existing and new taxonomies, vocabularies,
and ontologies can be mixed and meshed to represent
tion. Other areas are included, for instance, smart electrical
informationaboutvariousdomains,applicationscenarios,
grids [1].
organizations etc.
With the goal to develop the Industry 4.0 vision, CPS
are of paramount importance. CPS integrate physical and The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. An
overview of background information and descriptions of the Additionally, these objects have at least the capability of
relevantterminologyforourapproachisprovidedinsectionII. passive communication. As a result, a flexible framework
A comprehensive list of challenges aggregated from the cur- for data description and provisioning is established. In the
rent state of the art and our ongoing work on is presented in following, these elements are presented in detail.
sectionIII.InsectionIV,wepresentSemanticI4.0Component
C. Object
which is our approach to addressing the challenges using
semantic web technologies. In addition, a concrete example is In [6], the term object is used to refer each individual
given in section V which shows the benefits of our approach physically or non-physically part. An object can be an entire
in real world use case. We provide an overview about related machine, an automation component or a software platform.
work in section VI. The conclusion and an outlook to future Fromatimeperspective,itcouldbealegacysystemoranew
work are presented in section VII. systemdevelopedbymoderntechniquesandtechnologies.The
industry should be able to integrate and benefit from these
II. BACKGROUND
objects, independent of the type and time that they belong.
Thissectiondescribesseveralconceptsandterminologythat
are relevant for our approach. D. Administrative Shell
A. RAMI Model The Administrative Shell is used to store all important
data of an object which can be hardware or software. It
Several German institutions and associations worked in
creates benefits for all participants in networked manufactur-
closecooperationtodefineareferencemodelforIndustry4.0.
ing. Consequently, a consistent way of managing data along
The result is the Reference Architecture Model for Industry
with various functions and services for data manipulation and
4.0 (RAMI 4.0), that describes fundamental aspects of the
publication is provided. Some of the benefits are presented in
Industry 4.0 [6]. It illustrates the connection between IT,
detail as below [6]:
manufacturers/plants and product life cycle through a three-
a) Management of Data: The Administrative Shell pro-
dimensional space. Each dimension shows a particular part
vides mechanisms to manage a large amount of data and
of these worlds divided into different layers as depicted in
information generated by manufacturers or participants. For
Figure 1. Left vertical axis represents IT perspective which
instance, it stores and manages the information related to
is comprised of various layers such as business, functional,
configuration,maintenanceorconnectivitywithotherdevices.
information, etc. These layers corresponds to the IT way
b) Functions: Different functions such as configuration,
of thinking where complex projects are decomposed into
operation,maintenance,complexalgorithmsforbusinesslogic
smaller manageable parts. In the left hand horizontal axis is
are provided by the Administrative Shell. These functions
displayed the product life cycle where Type and Instance are
facilitate the interactivity between the I4.0 component and
distinguished as two main concepts. The model allows the
other actors including human users.
representationofthedatagatheredduringtheentirelifecycle.
c) Services: Althoughtheinformationofacomponentis
Along with the right hand horizontal axis the location of the
stored only once, they can be used beyond the boundaries of
functionalitiesandresponsibilitiesaregiveninthehierarchical
thecomponent,withinenterprisenetworksandinthecloudas
organization. The model broadens the hierarchical levels of
well. The advantage is that the information can be provided
IEC 62264 1 by adding the Product or a workpiece level
via IT services to any user or in any use case.
at the bottom, and the Connected World goes beyond the
boundaries of the individual factory at the top. In addition,
the reference architecture model allows the description and
implementationofhighlyflexibleconcepts.Thisleveragesthe
transitionprocessofcurrentmanufacturingsystemstoIndustry
4.0 by providing an easy step by step migration environment.
B. Industry 4.0 Component
A component is a basic concept in Industry 4.0. As defined
in [6] an I4.0 component constitutes a specific case of a CPS.
ItisusedasamodelforrepresentingthepropertiesofCPS,for
instance, real objects in a production environment connected
with virtual objects and processes. An I4.0 component can be
a production system, an individual machine, or an assembly
insideamachine.Itiscomprisedoftwofoundationalelements:
object and Administrative Shell. Every object or entity that is
surrounded by an Administrative Shell is described as I4.0
Fig. 1: Reference architecture model for Industrie 4.0
component. Figure 2 shows an example of such a component.
(RAMI 4.0) comprising the three dimensions layers, life-
cycle and hierarchy levels (from [6]).
1http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue detail.htm?csnumber=57308
4) Standardization compliance (Ch4): The Standardization
Administrative
process is an important step toward the realization of I4.0.
Shell
Several standards to deal with different layers in the en-
terprises exist nowadays. For instance, AutomationML [10],
Objects
Profibus [11] and OPC-UA [5], [12] are just some of the
examplesofthementionedstandards.Thecoreideaofallthis
effortistoprovideadetaileddescriptionofthecomponentsin
the manufacturing process. The production process constantly
generates different components and the standards need to
reflect this dynamically. As a result, the standards grow in
size and number, making this interoperability between them a
problem to solve.
Fig. 2: Concept of an Industry 4.0 Component consisting 5) Integration (Ch5): Highly dynamic environment is one
of the object and its Administrative Shell. of the key obstacles to the establishment of the vision of
I4.0. The complexity of horizontal and vertical integration of
the I4.0 components is drastically increased with the fluctuat-
d) Integration: TheAdministrativeShell,incombination ing number of the participants. Self-sense, self-configuration
with communication protocols, offers the possibility of easy and self-integration are some concepts used to describe au-
integration of each I4.0 component. tonomous interaction of a component with the environment in
e) Modularity: Each specific part of an object should be anetworkedmanufacturing.FollowingtheprinciplesfromRe-
abletostoreinformationinAdministrativeShell.Thisensures configurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS), adding, remov-
thatallinformationaresavedandisreadytobeusedinfurther ing, replacing or rearranging the components must not affect
analysis.Consequently,theIndustry4.0isappliedsuccessfully theproductionprocess[13].Thus,developingaconsistentdata
in a networked manufacturing. model is a crucial factor that facilitates the integration of I4.0
components in the changing environments.
III. CHALLENGES
6) Multilinguality (Ch6): In order to achieve a wide range
DevelopingthevisionofIndustry4.0raisesnewchallenges. of applicability to different cultures and communities [14],
These challenges become even harder since participants in a the I4.0 should be able to support localization (and interna-
networkedmanufacturingapplydifferentpolicies.Thissection tionalization) of the generated information. This will decrease
describes some of the challenges which are more critical the learning curve and allow easier and faster adoption of the
for I4.0 in general and I4.0 component in particular. In the Industry 4.0 in real production environment.
following, these requirements are presented in detail.
IV. SEMANTICI4.0COMPONENT
1) Interoperability (Ch1): On the one hand, I4.0 vision in-
cludesnewwaysofmanagingdata,machinesandcomponents. A. Addressing the challenges with the semantic approach
On the other hand, the enterprises need to maintain a huge It is widely accepted that semantics technologies play a
amount of legacy systems with their corresponding existing crucial role regarding the management of things, devices and
data. Commonly, this data is in different formats (e.g. plain services [15], [16]. Moreover, [6] recognizes as a requirement
text, DBMS, XML, etc.). The new data and new formats have that I4.0 components and their contents should follow a
to coexist with the old ones. common semantic model. Therefore, we propose a semantic
2) Global unique identification (Ch2): Enabling intercom- approach to address the challenges presented in section III.
munication among I4.0 components and the environment over This approach is developed using fine-grained principles from
theInternetisabigchallenge.Inadditiontothis,thereshould SemanticWebandLinkedData.Figure3depictsourproposal
be a linking mechanism between the I4.0 components and the to add a semantic layer to the Administrative Shell.
generatedinformation[7].Therefore,addressingthischallenge 1) Interoperability: To meet the interoperability demand,
is of paramount importance in order to realize the vision of RDF and Linked Data have proven to be a successful way to
I4.0. integrate different types of data [17], [18], [19]. Embedded
3) Data availability (Ch3): Another challenge is the avail- in the semantic for Administrative Shell we propose RDF
abilityofthedatabeyondtheboundariesofthemanufacturers as a middle layer to support the interoperability between the
and across different hierarchy levels. This challenge becomes data of the legacy systems and the data generated by the I4.0
evenharderwhenvarious policyrulesfrommanufacturersare component. We aim to establish RDF as a lingua franca for
applied. I4.0 components will communicate with each other data interoperability in the I4.0 landscape.
andinteractwiththeenvironmentthroughexchangingthedata 2) Global unique identification: Identification of each I4.0
generated from different sensors and react to the events by component by using global unique identifier ensures entity
triggering actions with the aim of controlling the physical disambiguation and retrievable [20]. According to linked data
world [8]. Therefore, sharing the generated data between principles [21], HTTP URIs should be used for naming
participants [9] is a key factor in the Industry 4.0. things. Following the above-mentioned principle, we propose
Repositories Standards for Industry 4.0
AutomationML
(IEC/TR 62794)
OPC UA
(IEC 62541)
Administrative Shell Vocabularies Fieldbus
Vocabulary for Standards (IEC 61918)...
Schema Layer
Web of Data
I4.0 Component Layer
Administrative Administrative Administrative Administrative
Shell Shell Shell Shell
Actuator Chemical Legacy Electrical
Systems Systems
Administrative Administrative Administrative Administrative
Shell Shell Shell Shell
Hardware Sensors Mechanical Monitoring
System Sytem
Fig. 3: The Semantic I4.0 Component architecture comprising vocabularies and RDF representations of relevant
standards for representing information about a wide range of relevant components.
that each I4.0 component should be identified by an HTTP 3) Data availability: The benefits of employing RDF as
URI. By doing so, a decentralized, holistic and extensible thestandardforrepresentationofthedataaretwofold.Firstly,
global unique identification scheme for I4.0 components is variousdataserializationformatsareeasytobegeneratedand
established.Asaconsequence,wewillhavederefenceableI4.0 transmitted over the network. Secondly, using SPARQL3, as
components which are able to self-locate and communicate a W3C Recommendation for an RDF query language, it is
witheachother.Listing1presentsourproposalforidentifying possible to make data available through a standard interface.
the I4.0 components. In addition, it shows that identification RDF representation of the data can be created on the fly,
capabilities can be extended by various existing vocabularies even if they are stored in relational databases or other data
that provides adequate means. This example uses the term formats [22]. By doing so, our approach enables data sharing
identifierfromDublinCoreVocabulary2toachieveareference between legacy systems and other participants in a networked
to the resource which is unambiguous within a given context. manufacturing as well.
4) Standardization compliance: Following the idea of em-
Listing 1: Global ID with RDF
ploying RDF as a lingua franca for data integration, we
@prefix i40c:<http://purl.org/eis/i40c/>. propose to translate existing standards into RDF vocabularies
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22−rdf−syntax−ns#>.
@prefix rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf−schema#> . and SKOS thesauri. The interoperability between standards
@prefix dcterms:<http://purl.org/dc/terms/>. can thus be managed through the integration of the respec-
#Class Definition tive vocabularies. In addition, these vocabularies are also
i40c:Actuator rdfs:subClassOf i40c:Component ; connected with the Administrative Shell data (cf Figure 3).
rdfs:comment "Actuator is ...";
rdfs:label "Actuator". As an example, we created an RDF vocabulary for the IEC
61360 - Common Data Dictionary (IEC CDD)4. IEC CDD
#Instance Definition
i40c:ActuatorAAA001 a i40c:Actuator; is a common repository of concepts for all electrotechnical
dcterms:identifier "AAA001" ; domainsbasedonthemethodologyandtheinformationmodel
rdfs:label "Actuator ID AAA001".
3http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/
2http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#H1 4http://std.iec.ch/cdd/iec61360/iec61360.nsf/
i40c:ActuatorAAA001 a i40c:Actuator;
dcterms:identifier "AAA001" ;
rdfs:label "Actuator with ID AAA001"@en;
rdfs:comment "Actuator is ..."@en;
rdfs:label "Aktor mit ID AAA001"@de;
rdfs:comment "Aktor ist ..."@de.
B. The Administrative Shell Vocabulary
In order to provide a semantic layer for the Administrative
ShellwehavedevelopedanRDFSvocabulary.Thisisdepicted
in Figure 5 (for brevity reasons, we have omitted most of the
properties and some of the classes). Our approach defines the
Administrative Shell vocabulary by providing an ontological
formalization of the terms and concepts presented in the I4.0
component. The central classes that cover the main concepts
are i40c:AdministrativeShell and i40c:Object.
The first class encapsulates the knowledge regarding the
Administrative Shell. This class wraps the object concept and
connects it with most of the important features in the I4.0
Fig. 4: Overview of the class Component Hierarchy in the domain.Thei40c:TechnicalFunctionalityclassal-
IEC CDD Vocabulary. lows to encode information regarding the version, url of the
software that manage the I4.0 object. Additionally, this class
model information about the life stage, representation as well
of IEC 61360. It provides a widely accepted terminology and as the deployment of the mentioned object. Other important
definitions based on accepted sources such as IEC standards classes connected to the i40c:AdministrativeShell
as well as international and industry standards. It contains are the i40c:Manifest and i40c:Data. Firstly, the
four major concepts: Component, Material, Feature information for commercial, mechanical and location features
and Geometry. Component describesan industrialproduct are modeled with the class i40c:Manifest. Secondly, the
which serves a specific function and which in a given context classDatarepresentsdifferenttypesofdatasuchasstatistical,
is considered not to be decomposable or physically divisible engineering, etc.
and is intended for use in a higher-order assembled product. Thei40c:ObjectencapsulatetheI4.0objectandimpor-
Component is represented by an Object in RAMI Model, tantdatarelatedtoit(e.g.identification,image,technicaldata).
and when it is surrounded by the Administrative Shell forms Inaddition,informationregardingthephasesoftheobjectand
and I4.0 component. Figure 4 depicts part of the hierarchy of theentirelifecyclearemanaged.GiventhattheI4.0objectcan
the iec:Component class. bepartofothercomponents,weusedtheisPartOfContent
5) Integration: Running on completely unified and consis- Ontology Design pattern5 to capture this characteristic.
tent data model facilitates the integration of I4.0 components. We argue that using a lightweight RDFS vocabulary, an
Newly added components need a shorter time for the inte- important step towards realizing the I4.0 vision in real world
gration process. Other peers will be aware of new peer and applications is established.
the way of communication with it by simply synchronizing
V. USECASE
withthelatestversionofvocabulary.TheVocabularycontains
ThevisionofIndustry4.0iscenteredaroundtheconceptof
all necessary information for interaction and data exchanging
decentralized production and smart objects that participate in
between peers in a networked manufacturing.
the production in terms of autonomy and decision-making. To
6) Multilinguality: Since various communities across the
accomplishthisgoal,objectmetadata,data,andrelationswith
world will interact with I4.0 components, it is very important
other objects, need to be semantically described within the
thattheywillreceivetermsintheirownlanguage.Theseman-
Administrative Shell. By doing so, the information provided
tic web technologies enable implementation of multilinguality
by one object can be understood and exploited by other smart
in a very straightforward manner. This will remain valid even
objects in the production chain. To illustrate the applicability
for the newly introduced languages or concepts. Listing 2
of our approach we detail, in this section, a use case where
depictsanexampleofourapproachformultilinguality.Inthis
the semantic Administrative Shell is used to describe an I4.0
example is modeled an actuator with the adequate translation
component and some of its basic relations.
for rdfs:label and rdfs:comment into respective languages,
Listing 3 shows the semantic representation of the Admin-
English and German.
istrative Shell for the Motor controller CMMP-AS-C2-3A-M3
Listing 2: Multilinguality object(aproductofFestoAG6).Forbrevity,wedescribehere
@prefix i40c:<http://purl.org/eis/i40c/>.
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22−rdf−syntax−ns#>. 5http://ontologydesignpatterns.org/wiki/Submissions:PartOf
@prefix rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf−schema#> . 6https://www.festo.com/cat/en-gb gb/products CMMP AS
Fig. 5: Overview of the core classes and relationships of the Administrative Shell Vocabulary.
i40c:functionBlockUrl "https://.../Siemens_V3_0.zip";
Motor controller Single-phase i40c:hasDate "2015-11-02"ˆˆxsd:date ;
CMMP-AS-C2-3A-M3 AdminShell i40c:hasVersion "3.0"ˆˆxsd:string .
Object surround 1
1 OneofthemainadvantagesoftheSemanticAdministrative
1501325 hasTechnical ShellistheuniformdatarepresentationaccordingtotheRDFS
Functionality model, which enables efficient integration and querying the
hasTechnical
Data 2015-11-02 data comprised in the shell. In order to illustrate the data
Seven-segment
display Platform retrieval, we have designed simple SPARQL queries. For
60 Ohm TechnicalData 1 v0.3 example, it is relevant to know the technical characteristics
1 of a component in its various phases (e.g. Single, Three). In
0...1,000 Hz https://.../Siemens_V3_0.zip thefollowingquery(cf.Listing4),weconstructanRDFgraph
thatcontainsadescriptionofthetechnicalfeatureofanobject
Fig. 6: Example of Industry 4.0 objects graph with Single-phase.
Listing 4: SPARQL query to retrieve the electrical data
with the state Initiated
the most relevant data of the resources.
@prefix i40c:<http://purl.org/eis/i40c/>.
Thisexamplecontainsfourinstancesofrespectivetypes.An @prefix rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf−schema#> .
AdminShell1 surround Object1 and related it with the
CONSTRUCT {
majority of the concepts in the domain, as the Platform1 ?object rdfs:label ?name.
in this case. Also, Object1 has its technical data defined on ?technicalData i40c:brakingResistance ?resistance .
?technicalData i40c:outputFrequency ?frequency .
the resource TechnicalData1 (cf. Figure 6). } WHERE {
?object i40c:hasPhase "Single-phase"@en .
?adminShell i40c:surround ?object .
Listing 3: Semantic Administrative Shell for the servo
?object rdfs:label ?name.
motor controller CMMP-AS-C2-3A-M3 ?object i40c:hasTechnicalData ?technicalData .
?technicalData i40c:brakingResistance ?resistance .
@prefix i40c:<http://purl.org/eis/i40c/>. ?technicalData i40c:outputFrequency ?frequency .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22−rdf−syntax−ns#> . }
i40c:AdminShell1 a i40c:AdministrativeShell ;
rdfs:label "AdminShell1"ˆˆxsd:string ; Another example is retrieving the information of the I4.0
i40c:surround i40c:Object1 ; component platform, during the maintenance cycle. The plat-
i40c:hasTechFuncionality i40c:Platform1 .
formentitiesarereferringtofunctionallibraryelements,which
i40c:Object1 a i40c:Object ; arespecifictoacertainautomationsystem.Thequerymodeled
rdfs:label "Motor control..."@en ;
i40c:hasId "1501325"ˆˆxsd:string ; in Listing 5, obtains the details of the platform like the name,
i40c:hasPhase "Single-phase"@en ; version and the software URL that supports the I4.0 object.
i40c:hasTechnicalData i40c:TechnicalData1 ;
i40c:image "<http://...b4dc.jpg>" .
Listing5:SPARQLquerytoretrievetheversion,dateand
i40c:TechnicalData1 a i40c:TechnicalData ; URL of the platform software
rdfs:label "TechnicalData1"@en ;
i40c:BrakingResistance "60 Ohm"; @prefix i40c:<http://purl.org/eis/i40c/>.
i40c:Outputfrequency "0...1,000 Hz" ; @prefix rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf−schema#> .
i40c:display "Seven-segment display"@en .
CONSTRUCT {
i40c:Platform1 a i40c:Platform ; ?object i40c:hasId ?objectId.
rdfs:label "Function blocks ..."@en ; ?platform rdfs:label ?name .
?platform i40c:hasVersion ?version . embedding of digital product information into physical prod-
?platform i40c:hasDate ?date . ucts. In this approach the Smart Product Description Object
?platform i40c:functionBlockUrl ?url .
} WHERE { (SPDO) is presented. SPDO is a data model built on top of
?adminShell i40c:surround ?object . the DOLCE ontology for describing smart products.
?adminShell i40c:hasTechnicalFuncionality ?platform .
?object i40c:hasId ?objectId. [32] defines an approach for distinguishing the local and
?platform i40c:hasVersion ?version .
global data structures stored in Active Digital Object Mem-
?platform i40c:hasDate ?date .
?platform i40c:functionBlockUrl ?url . ories (ADOMe), smart labels with memory and processing
?platform rdfs:label ?name .
capabilities. According to the author, this can be realized by
}
storing the data in a unified structured format.
TheaboveusecaseshowshowtheSemanticAdministrative The idea of bringing semantic descriptions of physical
Shell provides a more flexible data model. This semantic elements by combining OMM and a server realization has
representation helps to overcome the challenges that I4.0 is beenconductedby[31].Nevertheless,thisworkisfocusedon
facing. the identification of the elements and still rely on the above
mentioned limitations of OMM format.
VI. RELATEDWORK
Currently, there are some efforts discussing the need of
bringing more semantics and data-driven approaches to I4.0. VII. CONCLUSIONANDFUTUREWORK
[27] presents guidelines, aiming to help on choosing the
In this paper, we have described an approach for semanti-
level of semantic formalization for the representation of the
callyrepresentinginformationaboutsmartI4.0deviceswithan
different types of I4.0 projects. The crucial role of semantic
AdministrativeShell.Theapproachisbasedonstructuringthe
technologiesformasscustomizationisdiscussedin[16].This
information using an extensible and light-weight vocabulary
work recognizes semantic technologies as a glue to connect
aiming to capture all relevant information. Compared to prior
smart products, data and services. Obitko [28] describes the
approaches,theRDF-basedSemanticAdministrativeShellhas
applicationofsemanticstoI4.0fromtheBigDataperspective.
a number of advantages. The URI/IRI based identification
The features of Big Data, as well as, an ontology for sensor
schemeprovidesaunifiedwaytoidentifyalltypesofrelevant
data are presented. Table I provides a comparison of our ap-
entities, from physical objects, abstract concepts, properties,
proach to the related I4.0 component description approaches.
concrete raw and derived data, etc. Existing standards (such
Electronic Device Description Language (EDDL) is a
as eClass, IEC device characteristics or AutomationML) can
language to describe information related to digital compo-
be more easily integrated and referenced. Information about
nents [23], [29]. Up to date, EDDL is available for a huge
and from different objects can be easily integrated (since a
amount of devices that are currently utilized in the process
basic integration can be achieved by merging sets of triples).
industry. EDDL is a text-based description file of the field
Accessing the information in a unified way is established by
device and its properties, which describes the data and how
using SPARQL as query language.
they should be displayed.
We see this work as a first step in a larger research
The Object Memory Model (OMM) is an XML-based
and development agenda aiming at equipping manufacturing
format which allows for modeling of the information about
equipment with semantics-based means for communication
individualphysicalelements[25].Inthiswork,thememoryof
and data exchange. In the medium to long term, we aim to
theelementsispartitionedtoincludedifferenttypesofdatare-
bringmoreintelligencetotheedgeofproductionfacilitiesthus
gardingtheidentification,name,etc.Theideaofthisapproach
promoting self-organization and resilience.
was to bring a semantic layer to the physical components
In future work, we envision to refine and expand the
but still suffers the intrinsic limitations of XML. However,
AdministrativeShellvocabularyinordertoprovidesupportfor
it is envisioned, that elements in the OMM (so called blocks)
awiderangeofdevicetypes.Weintendtostudytheinteraction
contain RDF and OWL payload data. Extending the concept
between various devices equipped with Administrative Shells
of OMM Domeman [30] is a framework for representation,
and research application scenarios, such as predictive mainte-
management, and utilization of digital object memories The
nance.AnotherinterestingavenueofresearchishowSemantic
ideaofbringingsemanticdescriptionsofphysicalelementsby
Administrative Shells can be generated and populated from
combining OMM and a server realization has been conducted
existing information systems and data sources available at the
by [31]. Nevertheless, this work is focused on the identifi-
manufacturers.
cation of the elements and still rely on the above mentioned
limitations of OMM format.
The Physical Markup Language (PML) is a common lan- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
guage for describing physical objects, processes and environ-
ments [24]. The goal of PML is to use this descriptions in This work is supported by the German Ministry for Ed-
remote monitoring and control of the physical environment. ucation and Research funded project LUCID and European
Janzen [26] defines the Smart products as the connection CommissionunderH2020fortheprojectBigDataEurope(GA
of physical products and information goods which allow the 644564).
Approach BasicConcept Identification Datamodel OrganizationType Serialization
EDDL[23] Device DeviceandUnitID Object Hierarchical Text
PML[24] Physicalobject XMLtagID Object Hierarchical XML
OMM[25] Physicalartifact PrimaryIDandIDsBlock Element Hierarchical XML
SPDO[26] Product URI/IRI Resource Hierarchical OWL-DL
SemAdminShell AdministrativeShell URI/IRI Resource Hierarchical RDF,RDFSchema,OWL
TABLE I: Comparison with related I4.0 component description approaches.
REFERENCES [19] M. Graube, J. Pfeffer, J. Ziegler, and L. Urbas, “Linked data as inte-
grating technology for industrial data,” in Network-Based Information
Systems(NBiS),201114thInternationalConferenceon. IEEE,2011,
[1] R. Drath and A. Horch, “Industrie 4.0: Hit or hype?[industry forum],”
pp.162–167.
IndustrialElectronicsMagazine,IEEE,vol.8,no.2,pp.56–58,2014.
[20] D. Bandyopadhyay and J. Sen, “Internet of things: Applications and
[2] E. Lee et al., “Cyber physical systems: Design challenges,” in Object challengesintechnologyandstandardization,”WirelessPersonalCom-
Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC), 2008 11th IEEE munications,vol.58,no.1,pp.49–69,2011.
InternationalSymposiumon. IEEE,2008,pp.363–369. [21] T.Berners-Lee,C.Bizer,andT.Heath,“Linkeddata-thestorysofar,”
[3] M. Mikusz, “Towards an understanding of cyber-physical systems as InternationalJournalonSemanticWebandInformationSystems,vol.5,
industrial software-product-service systems,” Procedia CIRP, vol. 16, no.3,pp.1–22,2009.
pp.385–389,2014. [22] B. Quilitz and U. Leser, “Querying distributed rdf data sources
[4] E. Tovar and F. Vasques, “Real-time fieldbus communications us- with sparql.” in ESWC, ser. Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
ing profibus networks,” Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on, S. Bechhofer, M. Hauswirth, J. H. 0001, and M. Koubarakis,
vol.46,no.6,pp.1241–1251,Dec1999. Eds., vol. 5021. Springer, 2008, pp. 524–538. [Online]. Available:
[5] W. Mahnke, S.-H. Leitner, and M. Damm, OPC unified architecture. http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/esws/eswc2008.html#QuilitzL08
SpringerScience&BusinessMedia,2009. [23] T. M. Riedl M., Simon R., “Eddl electronic device description lan-
[6] P. Adolphs, H. Bedenbender, D. Dirzus, M. Ehlich, U. Epple, guage,”Mu¨nchen,OldenburgIndustrieverlag,2002.
M. Hankel, R. Heidel, M. Hoffmeister, H. Huhle, B. Krcher, [24] D. L. Brock, T. P. Milne, Y. Y. Kang, and B. Lewis, “The physical
H. Koziolek, R. Pichler, S. Pollmeier, F. Schewe, A. Walter, markuplanguage,”Auto-IDCenterWhitePaperMIT-AUTOID-WH-003,
B. Waser, and M. Wollschlaeger, “Reference architecture model 2001.
industrie 4.0 (rami4.0),” 2015. [Online]. Available: http://www.zvei. [25] J.Haupert,M.Seißler,B.Kiesel,B.Schennerlein,S.Horn,D.Schreiber,
org/Downloads/Automation/5305%20Publikation%20GMA%20Status% andR.BARTHEL,“Objectmemorymodeling,”2011.
20Report%20ZVEI%20Reference%20Architecture%20Model.pdf [26] S. Janzen and W. Maass, “Smart product description object (spdo),”
[7] K. Fra¨mling, M. Harrison, J. Brusey, and J. Petrow, “Requirements in Poster Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Formal
onuniqueidentifiersformanagingproductlifecycleinformation:com- OntologyinInformationSystems(FOIS).Saarbru¨cken,Germany,2008.
parison of alternative approaches,” International Journal of Computer [27] C.-H. Cheng, T. Guelfirat, C. Messinger, J. Schmitt, M. Schnelte,
IntegratedManufacturing,vol.20,no.7,pp.715–726,2007. and P. Weber, “Semantic degrees for industrie 4.0,” arXiv preprint
[8] O. Vermesan, P. Friess, P. Guillemin, S. Gusmeroli, H. Sundmaeker, arXiv:1505.05625,2015.
A. Bassi, I. S. Jubert, M. Mazura, M. Harrison, M. Eisenhauer et al., [28] M. Obitko and V. Jirkovsky`, “Big data semantics in industry 4.0,” in
“Internetofthingsstrategicresearchroadmap,”O.Vermesan,P.Friess, IndustrialApplicationsofHolonicandMulti-AgentSystems. Springer,
P. Guillemin, S. Gusmeroli, H. Sundmaeker, A. Bassi, et al., Internet 2015,pp.217–229.
ofThings:GlobalTechnologicalandSocietalTrends,vol.1,pp.9–52, [29] S. Runde, G. Wolf, and M. Braun, “Eddl and semantic web - from
2011. field device integration (fdi) to future device management (fdm).” in
[9] M. Abu-Elkheir, M. Hayajneh, and N. A. Ali, “Data management for ETFA, C. Seatzu, Ed. IEEE, 2013, pp. 1–8. [Online]. Available:
theinternetofthings:Designprimitivesandsolution,”Sensors,vol.13, http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/conf/etfa/etfa2013.html#RundeWBS13
no.11,pp.15582–15612,2013. [30] J. Haupert, “Domeman: a framework for representation, management,
andutilizationofdigitalobjectmemories,”inIntelligentEnvironments
[10] R. Drath, Datenaustausch in der Anlagenplanung mit AutomationML:
(IE),20139thInternationalConferenceon. IEEE,2013,pp.84–91.
IntegrationvonCAEX,PLCopenXMLundCOLLADA. Springer-Verlag,
[31] J.HaupertandM.Schneider,“Theobjectmemoryserverforsemantic
2010.
productmemories,”inSemProM. Springer,2013,pp.175–189.
[11] IEC. (2013) Iec 61918:2013 industrial communication networks -
[32] S. Bergweiler, “Intelligent manufacturing based on self-monitoring
installationofcommunicationnetworksinindustrialpremises.[Online].
cyber-physicalsystems,”UBICOMM2015,p.121,2015.
Available:https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/6100
[12] U. Enste and W. Mahnke, “Opc unified architecture.”
Automatisierungstechnik, vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 397–405, 2011. [Online].
Available:http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/journals/at/at59.html#EnsteM11
[13] E. Abele, A. Wo¨rn, J. Fleischer, J. Wieser, P. Martin, and R. Klo¨pper,
“Mechanicalmoduleinterfacesforreconfigurablemachinetools,”Pro-
ductionEngineering,vol.1,no.4,pp.421–428,2007.
[14] M.Hillier,“Theroleofculturalcontextinmultilingualwebsiteusabil-
ity,”ElectronicCommerceResearchandApplications,vol.2,no.1,pp.
2–14,2003.
[15] M.Thoma,T.Braun,C.Magerkurth,andA.-F.Antonescu,“Managing
things and services with semantics: A survey,” in Network Operations
and Management Symposium (NOMS), 2014 IEEE. IEEE, 2014, pp.
1–5.
[16] W. Wahlster, “Semantic technologies for mass customization,” in To-
wards the Internet of Services: The THESEUS Research Program.
Springer,2014,pp.3–13.
[17] A.Langegger,W.Wo¨ß,andM.Blo¨chl,Asemanticwebmiddlewarefor
virtualdataintegrationontheweb. Springer,2008.
[18] C.Bizer,C.Becker,P.N.Mendes,R.Isele,A.Matteini,andA.Schultz,
“Ldif-aframeworkforlarge-scalelinkeddataintegration,”2012.
