Introduction

The document series "Details of the Asset Administration Shell" specifies the different needs of implementing Asset Administration Shells in an Industry 4.0 environment. A corresponding IEC series is in development, see [13].

Besides a technology-neutral specification of the information model in UML, several different formats are provided to exchange Asset Administration Shells: XML, JSON, RDF, AutomationML, as well as an OPC UA information model.

Figure 1 shows the different ways of exchanging information via Asset Administration Shells. This part of the "Details of the Asset Administration Shell" series, Part 5, deals with type 1: file exchange. The following steps need to be executed to enable an exchange between partners:

  1. definition of the Asset Administration Shell in a selected format, for example XML (see [9]),

  2. selecting the additional files that are referenced in submodels of the Asset Administration Shell and should also be exchanged,

  3. provision of the Asset Administration Shell together with the selected files in a standardized exchange format, the AASX package format as specified in this document,

  4. defining a secure way to exchange the file, for example via secure file download on a web server [12].

aas info exchange types
Figure 1. Part 5: File Exchange Type of Information Exchange via Asset Administration Shells