c-rex.net IDS and the digital nameplate

What is meant by 'digital twin', 'digital nameplate' and'management shell' ?

If you like, watch the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) video for an introduction to the topic.

There, the advantages of the digital nameplate are shown in an illustrative way.

The idea behind the digital nameplate:

Access to relevant information about a product no longer occurs solely on a nameplate attached to the product.

This has long since become too small for the amount of data that exists for a product.

Via a QR code or RFID chip, you link your product to the pool of data that exists on the product.

This data pot (as T. Tauchnitz describes very nicely here ) is called a digital twin.

Der digitale Zwilling ist das vollständige digitale Abbild eines Gerätes oder eines Prozesses. Bildlich gesprochen ein „Datentopf“, der alles sammelt, was man über das Objekt weiß. Das können die technischen Daten des Geräts sein, CAD-Zeichnungen, Daten für eine Simulation, die aktuelle Verdrahtung, aber auch die aktuellen Sensordaten in diesem Moment.

The concrete realization of this data pot is regulated by a standard, the so-called Asset Administration Shell(AAS), in which all data necessary for the administration of the product are included.

The link between the real product and the digitally available product information is made with a unique product code, the composition of which is regulated in the DIN EN 17071:2019-05 standard.

The way to your digital nameplate

This is how we envision the distribution of roles on the way to your digital nameplate:

• You take care of the unique product identifier for your products and the integration into your nameplate.

• With c-rex.net IDS, we provide you with a data service that can be integrated into any use case via a contentapi in the form of a headlessCDP. So you don't necessarily 'see' our information hub. It appears as functionality in your customer portal, on your website, in your corporate design.

• In addition, we ensure that no one has to manually fill the data pots of your products.

  With our data services, product-related information is compiled automatically.

  And this is the crux that distinguishes our solution from others.

IDS as Asset Administration Shell - Technical background information

c-rex.net IDS uses metadata described in the iiRDS on which IDS is based.

With this, we realize the compilation of all data relevant to your product and thus take over the function of the Asset Administration Shell.

• product variant, iirds:ProductVariant

• Assembly, iirds:Component

• Documentation in different granularities: iirds:InformationUnit

Since the metadata for products or assemblies can be industry-specific and often company-specific, iiRDS offers appropriate docking points here to link individual metadata to the standard.

We have already highlighted this topic in our blog post about HOMAG.

These can be other standards, such as ECLASS, or in the simplest case, proprietary product metadata, such as the serial number, and manufacturer informationiirds:Party).

Process flow when calling up the product website via the nameplate

When users scan the QR code on the nameplate, they trigger a request to the c-rex.net IDS Content API.

The product information, identified by manufacturer plus serial number, is displayed.

At the same time, other queries are running to find the related information units (schematics, documentation, certificates, etc.) and display them in the portal as well.

Then users can navigate through the document structure or continue searching for information in this area to quickly find relevant information.

Added value through automated compilation of product information

"And what is special about this?" you might ask. And object that the manufacturers who already work with digital nameplates do the same or something similar.

Visit http://www.i40-aas.de/ for some examples of how product manufacturers link to their product websites.

That's a good thing. You can do it this way. This is a step towards more customer centricity and up-to-date information.

However, we are more concerned with how this information gets onto the product pages.

Especially with more and more variants, no one can manually take care of providing this information here.

That's why we take the approach of compiling product information automatically and dynamically and keeping it up to date automatically.

Reuse in content delivery

Although machines are becoming more and more individualized, there are documents that apply to all machines in a product group, product series or product line, or even to all machines in a company or division.

Some documents of these are created at different product life cycles. They change when a machine is serviced, overhauled or modernized for a new application.

That's why we believe we need reuse in content delivery as well, albeit in a different form than content creation.

More: Documentation, in fact the entire digital twin, must live with the physical product to truly become a 1:1 replica in the digital world.

No one can do that manually anymore. That's why we need to bring momentum into play. And metadata about the concrete, then individual product and the respective information unit help us to do this.

So we need to be able to deal with 'constantly' changing states and compilations in the management shell, in the digital twin, and link information in a completely detached way to product information. Just as we would do with machine data.

How a dynamic compilation of information can work

Documentation is created and published and linked to a product via a metadatum. It is irrelevant whether the product already, not yet or (soon) no longer exists.

Once the product information is published, the relationship is fully established and the twin begins to function.

Updated metadata on the information unit can also be used to establish the validity of the document for the current state via the status (iirds:ContentLifeCycleState), if required.

On the product side, it is possible to react to the machine status and not display the document at all or display it differently if it is still needed for traceability.

In technical terms, we are talking about Linked Data, which enables this dynamic in the provision of information.

Behind this is the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as the underlying standard and, specifically for the area of technical documentation, iiRDS. The iiRDS is a concretized manifestation of the RDF standard, for which tekom has defined a fixed set of metadata and a package format for exchange.

The whole thing becomes really exciting when, as at HOMAG, the states or events of a machine trigger an action in addition to the product information.

For example, when users receive a push notification on their cell phone as soon as a machine is on error or needs maintenance soon.

By clicking on this push notification, the user then receives direct access to the documents that are relevant for him in this specific situation, in order to be able to solve the task at hand as quickly and optimally as possible.

Conclusion and outlook

We called our blog post c-rex.net IDS and the digital nameplate.

Have we drifted away from the 'digital nameplate' use case with our explanations?

No, we are not.

Like a machine, documentation also has a state (status). It is a part of the digital twin, so it belongs to the digital nameplate.

In addition, the digital nameplate uniquely identifies a machine. One can get to the product page and further information via a link.

An event (error, maintenance due) is nothing else in this respect. In addition to the specific product, other more concrete information is supplied with the query, which must also be identified (perhaps even uniquely).

While the use case of automated, status-based information compilation goes beyond the digital nameplate itself.

But ultimately, our approach is about a clearly defined set of metadata that identifies more fine-grained information as uniquely as possible.

Always with the goal of picking up users where they are as quickly as possible and providing them with the information they need in a way that is appropriate to the situation (ideally before they know they need it).