Introduction

This document specifies the metamodel of the Asset Administration Shell.

The general concept and the structure of the Asset Administration Shell is described in IEC 63278-1 (see Figure 1).

2 iec63278 1 overview
Figure 1. Asset Administration Shell and its Stakeholders (Source: IEC 63278-1)

These are the main specifics and stakeholders defined for the Asset Administration Shell:

  • an Asset Administration Shell is associated to an asset;

  • an Asset Administration Shell provides AAS interface(s);

  • there are one or more Submodels listed in an Asset Administration Shell;

  • an AAS responsible has an interest in an asset, and based on this interest creates and governs an Asset Administration Shell;

  • an AAS user application accesses an Asset Administration Shell via its AAS interface(s) for use by humans or for automated processing;

  • a Submodel template may serve as guidance for a Submodel.

  • Submodels reference concept repositories;

  • a Submodel template may be used to serve as guidance for a Submodel and references concept repositories;

  • asset can provide asset services;

  • Submodels may reference asset services via an asset integration and may also reference asset related services.

This document specifies a technology-neutral specification of the information metamodel of the Asset Administration Shell in UML. It serves as the basis for deriving several different formats for exchanging Asset Administration Shells, e.g. for XML, JSON, and RDF.

Figure 2 shows the different ways of exchanging information Asset Administration Shells. This part of the "Specifications of the Asset Administration Shell" series is the basis for all of these types of information exchange.

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Figure 2. Types of Information Exchange via Asset Administration Shells

File exchange (1) is described in detail in Part 5 of this document series.

The API (2) based on the information metamodel specified in this document is specified in Part 2 of the document series "Specification of the Asset Administration Shell" (IDTA-01002) [37].

The I4.0 language (3) is based on the information metamodel specified in this document [47].