Interoperable Digital Twins in IIoT Systems by Transformation of Information Models: A Case Study with Asset Administration Shell

Abstract

By providing a consolidated access point to information of devices and systems, digital twins enable new, data-intensive use cases for the industrial internet of things (IIoT), like predictive plant and product design. However, the lack of interoperability between the digital twins of different companies hinders use cases that require information exchange between different organizations. Achieving interoperability among digital twins requires transforming the included information to other formats. In this paper, we present requirements and a solution to enable interoperable digital twins by transforming their information models in a flexible way. We illustrate how we applied our solution to a real-world application example in an industrial context by transforming ABB Ability™ digital twins to the Asset Administration Shell format. We show that our customizable transformation system paves the way for on demand interoperability and thereby enables advanced use cases in the IIoT.