The Industrie 4.0 Asset Administration Shell as Information Source for Security Analysis

Abstract

One of the essential concepts of the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) is the uniform modelling of assets by means of a common meta-data model called the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). However, important practical experience with this concept is still missing, as not many use cases for the AAS have yet been implemented. Thus, practical issues within the AAS concept and respective solutions are hard to identify. In this paper, presents our experience with the implementation of an AAS use case. The AAS is used as information source to create an ontology, which is then used for security analysis. The paper discusses the use-case-specific modelling language selection and provides a practical examination of several of our implementations that use OWL and OPC UA together. Furthermore, it provides recommendations for the implementation of Asset Administration Shells for this and similar use cases.