Towards asset administration shell-based continuous engineering in process industries

Abstract In this work we emphasize the role of the engineering process within the industrial automation domain and its underrepresentation in the Industry 4.0 community possibly explained by discrete roots of Industry 4.0. Towards this aim, we revisit the value chain on the leading picture of Industry 4.0 and indicate gaps for “design-to-order” products and projects where requirement artifacts like Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) or tag lists are exchanged prior to selecting, ordering and building the actual plant. After the understanding of the importance of the engineering process, we explore the opportunities of using Industry 4.0 technology stack to embed engineering information into the digital twin of a process plant. We underline possible synergies with the current developments of the Industry 4.0 community, like the Data Exchange in the Process Industry (DEXPI) and the Module Type Package (MTP) submodel template definitions. Finally, we present possible best practices for embedding existing engineering-related standards into the Industry 4.0 ecosystem and propose tactics and mechanisms for information modeling to accomplish this task in a most efficient and reusable way.