Welcome to the Open Source Way.
This is our podcast series,SAP's podcast series about the
difference that open source can be.
And in each episode, we will talkwith experts about open source and
why they do it the open source way.
I'm your host, Karsten Hohage.
And in this episode, I willtalk to Thiago Weber Martins
about AAS and digital twins.
Hi, Thiago.
Nice to have you here.
Hi Karsten, thank you for having me.
It's really great to be here.
You are more than welcome.
So, let's look at who Thiago is.
Thiago is a product managerfor AAS Digital Twins at SAP.
His mission is to further developdigital twins based on standards
within business applicationsand processes to ensure
interoperability inindustrial ecosystems.
So probably between digital twins,we'll talk about that, I guess.
He is therefore involved in theIndustrial Digital Twin Association,
IDTA, to drive the Asset AdministrationShell, which we previously called AAS,
as the standard for digital twins.
He holds a PhD in mechanical engineeringfrom the Technical University in
Darmstadt, where he focused onAI approaches to such processes.
And the interesting thing isthat I grew up in Darmstadt,
which was 1970 to the late 80s.
That was probably beforeyour time, right, Thiago?
That's correct.
So, when were you in Darmstadt?
Yeah, indeed.
I mean, I still live in Darmstadt,so I studied here, did my PhD.
And interesting and maybe curiousfact, I'm born in Brazil and I was
born in a city called Petropolis.
My family has a Germanbackground, right?
And, in the past, when the first Germanimmigrants came to the city, they
started to call some building blocks orsome, parts of the city, according to
the city where they came from Germany.
And indeed, some part of thecity was called Darmstadt.
We don't know exactly wheremy family came from, but
maybe it could be Darmstadt.
So interesting, yeah.
Interesting.
And Petropolis, is that correctthat that would mean rock city?
Not really, it's rather Petros.
It's like from, you know,Pedro, like the name and yeah.
Oh ok, I thought it was from, asin petrography, the science of
describing and analyzing rocks.
Not really.
No, not really.
Okay, because otherwise, therewould have been another connect.
My original line of study was geology.
And of course we look at rocks.
But anyway, so there is no connectionto that apparently, but the
Darmstadt connection is interesting.
And still, that's notwhat we're here for.
So far, no, once we've alreadytold everyone what it means,
can you say again, AAS, thatwe were going to talk about?
What is that?
So again, AAS stands forAsset Administration Shell.
Okay, so Asset Administration Shell.
All right.
Okay.
and in short, what is it?
Maybe like in three mainkeywords or a couple of lines?
Sure.
So maybe let's startwith three keywords.
So, first keyword would be the standardfor industrial digital twins, a second
keyword would be interoperability,and the third would be Industry 4.0.
If we start with the first one, whichis the standard for industrial digital
twins – the Asset AdministrationShell, or AAS, is an industry standard
as specified in the IEC 63278.
By the way, IEC stands for InternationalElectrotechnical Commission,
which is a standardization body.
This standard is providingspecifications about industrial
digital twins, and it enables usto represent assets in a digital
representation and, [also, mostimportant] in an interoperable manner.
And this leads to my secondkeyword, which is interoperability.
Interoperability is very importantwhen we talk about digital
twins, and maybe we can discussa little bit in detail later on.
It's about ensuring that, whateverhappens across or throughout the
product lifecycle, including theassets, machines, plans, and anything
else you can name across this processcan talk to each other, and also
enabling them to talk to theircorresponding systems, let's just say
in a more science-fiction manner thatdigital twins can talk to each other.
This leads also to the lastkeyword, which was the Industry 4.0.
Digital twin is one of the keyconcepts or key technology defined
in the context of Industry 4.0.
As you might hear, Industry 4.0 standsfor the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
AAS is one of the outcomes, fromthe Plattform Industrie 4.0, which
was a project founded by the Germangovernment to support advancements
in the IT for the industry.
Okay.
Now we obviously have one thingto clarify because our working
title here for the podcastmainly contains the AAS keyword.
And I think you said digitaltwins more often than you said
Asset Administration Shell.
So, what exactly in a littlemore detail are digital twins?
Exactly.
Simply speaking, a digital twin is adigital representation of an asset.
In this sense, you can imaginean asset could be a machine or
a component of this machine.
It could be a car, a building,or even your bike; so anything
that has a value attached to it.
And now coming back tothe digital twin, yeah.
So digital twin, for example,could be a machine with its
digital twin, or you can also sayhave a digital twin of a robot.
This robot will be not only existingas a physical part, a physical object,
but it will also have a digitalor virtual representation of this
object, robot, machine, or bike.
And this digital representationwill be describing properties,
capabilities, or functionalities,status-based on the measurement data,
for example, of this physical object.
This is what we call digital twin.
However, there are some importantthings that we should remind when
we talk about digital training.
So digital twin is describing a physicalobject, or we can also call a physical
twin or its physical counterpart.
And it has one unique ID becauseyou need to say, okay, a digital
twin, a physical twin has exactlythis association between each other.
And you need like, a name, right?
Or a means to identify themselves.
By that, it's also about ensuring thecommunication of the digital twin to
its corresponding physical counterpart.
So you need the communication to ensurethat there's interaction, communication,
association between both of them.
And in this way, you can ensurethat the digital twin is replicating
the current status of the physicalobject in its product life cycle.
By the way, when we talk aboutthe product life cycle, we can
differentiate idea of digital twinsin using terms like ‘as designed’,
‘as manufactured’, or ‘as built’.
In particular, when you're early inthe product life cycle [like in the
engineering phases, design phases],we say we have ‘Digital Twin asset
as designed’ or the ‘product asdesigned’ – which would be representing
the properties of product that isyet to be built or manufactured.
So it does not existyet, only virtually.
We call it like a product type,and based on it, you can, of
course, plan and manufacture it.
And this is when we call ‘asmanufactured digital twin’
of a product, or ‘as built’.
This would be like, the particularinstances are based on this ‘as designed
digital twin’; which is produced,manufactured, has serial measurements
data of this real product, so to say,has a serial number and so on and so on.
Finally, digital twins [as yousee here by this explanation]
can be pretty complex.
In particular, we are talking aboutrepresenting real-world entities
throughout its whole existence, whichwe can call here product lifecycle.
To ensure that we implement digitaltwins currently – but not only
implement, but ensure that the industryis adopting that – we need standards.
And this is where the AAS or AssetAdministration Shell plays a role
because we need to ensure that theindustry, the manufacturing industries,
for example, will adopt and use them tocreate value within their applications.
Okay.
Can I ask you some very shortreturn questions and you try
to answer just with yes or no?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, so the general approach, asyou said, digital twins, as the name
already says, is the representationof a physical asset, basically.
So, you could compare it to theobject-oriented approach, right?
Yes.
Okay, good.
And then I see that correctly:the ‘as designed twin’ is the one
that would contain the model ID,and the ‘as manufactured’ would
contain the serial number, right?
That's correct.
Okay.
Then I got that one right as well.
And then, digital twin is a standarddefined within Industry 4.0.
I understood thatcorrectly as well, right?
In fact, not quite.
So, technology Digital Twin wasindeed one of the many defined
within the term Industry 4.0.
But in fact, the term digitaltwin was already coined maybe
by 2003 in a product lifecyclemanagement context, and we still
go maybe a little bit even earlier.
I mean, when NASA had theApollo program, whenever a
spacecraft was already in orbit.
Of course, in that time, they did nothave the computing power or performance
that we have today, so many things theyhave to try it by themselves on Earth.
And of course, it was not really adigital twin as we would define today.
But they had kind of the identicalspacecraft on Earth, and whenever there
was a problem, they went into this,so to say, replica of a spacecraft and
try to figure out, “okay, what couldbe the problem” and what could be the
maintenance or sort out this problem.
Okay, so the idea goes back to timeswhen one was still using physical twins?
Exactly.
All right, all right, interesting.
With now digital twins [not physicalanymore] being what you described, and
you did already mention that: it ismainly a thing of the manufacturing
industries – or does it go beyond that?
Or, do you have any examples who'splaying along in the IDTA and so on?
Good question.
Indeed.
I'll say from now focusing on myactivities, I do focus a lot on the
manufacturing industries, discretemanufacturing, where mostly we have
machine builders or component builders.
But in fact, the digital twintechnology is not completely limited
to the manufacturing industries.
There is also of course, automotiveindustry, aerospace, buildings,
infrastructure, many other industrysectors that are interested; or
even healthcare are interested onthe term of digital twins, because
they are looking for the benefitsthat digital twins can provide.
Coming back to the IndustrialDigital Twin Association, IDTA:
indeed, there's a focus on themanufacturing industries there.
I think that it's important to emphasizehere, it's not only part of the
manufacturing industry, but also bythe manufacturing industry themselves.
Meaning, we are collaborating,we're working together, or we can
also say co-innovating based onopen standard, which is the Asset
Administration Shell, to not onlycreate innovation, but ensure that there
is adoption in the industry as well.
And this is led by this organizationcalled Industry Digital Association
[IDTA], where giants from the industrylike ABB, Mitsubishi Electric, Siemens,
Volkswagen and then we SAP are there aswell, where we together are then setting
the standards for the digital twin incontext of, manufacturing industries.
Alright, sounds like somethingwith quite an impact.
And now, not going back all the wayto NASA in the 50s and 60s again,
but its current manifestation: thedigital twins, how did that come about?
How did everyone get on board?
So, it's indeed a very exciting topic.
No, if we don't go back that much,like, fifties, but stay on about
2011, this is where many people inthe industry, politics, even science
were having some thoughts, “okay, whatcould be the future of the industry?”.
Yeah, and particularly now talkingfrom the German industry perspective.
In this context, they released ahigh-tech strategy and the umbrella
of this Industry 4.0 topic, likeFourth Revolution or even can
call evolution of the industry.
The goal was and is indeed tocreate innovation in the industry
by bringing or merging ITtechnologies into rather physical
manufacturing, and drive digitization.
So, the vision was cyber physicalsystem, which again, you can understand
as a merging the physical with digitalworld, which of course requires highly
connected industrial productions acrosscompanies; to ensure not only more
sustainable industry, but also thatthey are more efficient, competitive.
And ensure that we are settingthe innovation for the future.
To make all this happen, the Germangovernment funded and supported
Plattform Industrie 4.0, which you cansee as an organization where industry,
science, and some associations gottogether to drive the topic Industry 4.0
and to execute this high-tech strategy.
One of the outcomes of the PlattformIndustrie 4.0 is this concept, or the
technology, Asset Administration Shell– which is standard, as mentioned before.
This is a result out of a greatcollaboration between not only the
industry itself, but science to drivethe interest in innovation industry.
In particular cultivating that, digitaltwins is one of the main components
or technology to realize Industry4.0 use cases, and the AAS in fact
is, acting like a pivotal role here.
From my own description, it's has likea meta-standard character because it
has an overarching role if you considerthe complexity of digital twins.
For describing digital twins, youneed a lot of data and this data will
be spread all over the places withina company in different locations
and backends, but also in, withinother partners of this company.
And if we even say we've seen acompany if you see how digital twins
are made, there'll be already otherstandards or concepts being used.
For example, in doing the engineeringphase hearing about automation layer
or STEP [which is again, another ISOstandard where you will find pretty
much description, the definition,how a product will be], this
would be rather the part as built.
And if you go to the manufacturing, youhear standards about OPC UA from the
OPC Foundation, which is very focusedon getting data out of machine, right?
Really real-time data and put into amodel and a model so that you can use
it for your business applications.
The one part that is missing isactually, in my opinion, the Asset
Administration Shell, because it willbe bringing all of these pieces together
and ensure that you have a continuitythroughout the product life cycle.
This is why the AAS has a meta-standardrole ensuring that this data of
digital twins are being then connectedto IT systems for example, from the
manufacturing or from the shop floor.
Finally, from where we are rightnow, this leads to the actual
creation of the IndustrialDigital Twin Association or IDTA.
Because the Plattform Industrie4.0, and I said, okay, we
have this concept, yeah?
It's currently around the time whenIDTA was planned to be established,
it was like, okay, but how are weto ensure that it's going to be
really adopted in the industry?
Then by 2021, the IDTA was founded andit was mostly led by associations like
BitKom, VDMA, ZVEI, which respectivelyrepresents the IT, electrical, and
mechanical engineering sectors.
And of course, companies like SAP,we're also part of this idea to
fund an organization like IDTA.
Okay, wow.
Sounds like a big thingwith quite a history.
There was one very particularquestion that came to my
mind when you were talking.
Are the digital twins and the AAS, arethey only used to basically describe
and manage running processes, or doesthe industry also use them to develop
new things, like implement them inthe digital twin first, and then see
how that works in the digital worldbefore they take it to the physical?
In this, I'll say it'sa stepwise approach.
From my perception right now, we areobserving that the AAS would be rather
the concept helping organizationsto implement, Digital Twins, so that
they can use it to talk to othercompanies, bringing data about the
same asset or same product, right?
But indeed, one of the visions of theconcept Asset Administration Shell as
one implementation of Digital Twinsis that, one day, when we have the
concepts established, is that youhave digital twins that are thinking
by themselves, acting by themselves,and being able to communicate with
each other – to find, for example, away to the best way to solve problems
in the shop floor, for example.
This is where it's just a bit,more even science fiction, that
is still ongoing, but we are abit far from that, to be honest.
That's going even fartherthan what I was thinking of.
But as we're in an open sourcepodcast, another return question
about the entire concept: was thatopen source from the start, or
what kind of open source is it?
I guess it's probablynot open governance, but
controlled by the IDTA, right?
Yeah.
So, of course, as PlattformIndustrie 4.0 is was part of projects
supported by the German government.
Many of the results were, tosay, open source anyways.
But I think [an] important thing tomention here is, during the process
of the establishment of the IndustrialDigital Twin Association, the idea of
open source was already in the DNA.
From there, we were already aware ifyou want to ensure that technology like
the Asset Administration Shell is goingto be adopted and used in the industry,
we need the idea of open source as anapproach to ensure that it happens.
So, in fact, the specifications ofthe Asset Administration Shell are,
we can call it as open source,which is based on the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0International or CC BY 4.0.
Of course, you also have thespecifications, you want to have them
as a software or as a code as well.
And that's why the IDTA iscollaborating with the Eclipse
Foundation when it comes reallyto the open source code, right?
And they're in the Eclipse Foundationwhere we drive the implementation of the
specifications we'll say as open source.
And in fact, in the EclipseFoundation, we established what we
call the Eclipse Digital Twin TopLevel Project, where many projects
implementing different aspects of thespecifications are working together
as open source community, not only onbehalf of IDTA, but also with people
outside of our internal community,and also people coming from other
projects to make it happen in the end.
This is why open source is sointeresting because it provides
us the means, the platform toco-innovate with other stakeholders
that are also interested on usingand establishing such a technology.
Yup, and it provides youthe justification to even
be on this podcast at all.
But that is, of course, well givenwith keywords like Creative Commons
and Eclipse Foundation, I guess.
Now, anyway, the motivation, thebenefits, I mean; I think we understand
pretty clearly it's a benefit fororganizations if their assets that
span different organizations in theprocess can digitally communicate with
a common standard with each other.
Anything beyond that, somethingone might not directly think of?
Oh, indeed.
Maybe to start answering this question,we need to emphasize that -- well, we
already talked about it -- a digitaltwin of a product will accompany the
product which is being representedby its digital twin throughout
its whole product life cycle.
And again, when I talk about productlife cycle, of course, I talk about
planning your product, designing it,planning its production, producing
it, sending it to the customer, usingit or operating it, maintaining it.
Then it's about recycling it.
So assuming that the digital twinis born with the first idea, for
example, I have a great idea fora new bike and this is where you
can imagine a digital twin is born.
Now, of course, there are otherperceptions and they are all valid,
but I think for now, let's justassume the first idea is the kickstart
for a digital twin: from this idea,during its design, finalizing the
idea of this bike and make it happenduring the manufacturing, using it.
So, there will be a lot of data beinggenerated that you have somehow to bring
it together into this digital twin.
Then we can call it as thehistory of the product.
You can tell, okay, I have thecurrent status of this product.
And of course – interesting, Ithink you also mentioned one of
your questions – it's also abouta bit, trying to find out what's
going to happen with this product.
This is where digitaltwins will be helping.
So digital twin will reflectand mirror the physical product
whenever you are on this productit will sync the product lifecycle.
As a result, digital twin will goover, not only within the company,
but will have a certain part leavethe company boundaries as well.
And to extrapolate even more, itwill be distributed within several
stakeholders of the lifecycle.
By that I mean, once I had theidea to create this bike, it's
also about trying to find out if Iproduce the parts by myself, is it
about, buying from some suppliers?
By doing that, I alsoneed to share data.
And this is all related tothis digital twins somehow.
You can have several digitaltwins of the same product,
which will be everywhere.
But you can also have just parts of it.
This makes [it] , of course, prettycomplex, but actually it's pretty
exciting as well, because now there'sidea of distributed digital twins
across or throughout several companies.
Thus, with the goal to create value,and this is of course, the idea of
this being distributed makes a bitagain, complex, but this is where
having a concept of technology thatallows you or helps you to bring
all the data together, that helpsyou say, okay, what's going with
the product will help you a lot.
And examples on how digitaltwins will bring value?
It's about, we'll reducethe development costs.
Imagine a car: so you have virtualreplicas of your car and many of
efforts that you might be doing toensure that your car is being safe.
Many of the stuff can really besupported by digital twins during
the design phase, for example, right?
It's about optimizing manufacturing,make it more efficient,
ensuring the quality of theproducts you're manufacturing.
It's also about optimizing themanufacturing or the maintenance.
I mean by that, make it alwaysworking so that you're operating it
and don't lose time for waiting untilsomebody can come by and repair it.
This is why we need also thestandards because, in the end, it's
about getting the data to work andto bring into the digital twins so
that you can make this value happen.
This is [as we discussed] where the ideaof open source, open standards will show
their strengths because at companies,you'll be willing to invest there as
there's already something to start with.
So, the burdens will be lower,effort as well, costs will be lower.
And of course, people always thinkabout risks before doing investments,
in particular with new technologies.
And this is now knowing that you haveestablished open-source components
and specifications helps a lot.
Finally, when we talk about, creatingvalue based on this idea that digital
twins are going to be, distributedacross several systems, you have
also to ensure that you trust sharingdata, you trust getting data from
someone and make the data work.
So, this is another thing that Ilike traditionally-mentioned here,
is that the industry needs also whatyou call the framework or the data
space, where they can use digitaltwin data to ensure that they are
creating value based on the process.
And this is of course, again, bysharing with their players or with
the customers to create value.
One of the most-known projectsgoing on here in Germany is
what we call Manufacture-X – inparticular, with the idea to provide
this data space for the industry.
But let's not go deeper onthis because it's certainly
a topic for another podcast.
But again, there'll be data spacesfor different industrial sectors to
address their particular requirements.
We have Factor-X for machinery,we have Catena-X for automotive.
There is Chem-X for chemistry and soon, so, we're seeing the data space.
This is where the Asset AdministrationShell, AAS, will be playing its role
to ensure interoperability between thestakeholders and ensure that they can
collaborate on top of the digital twins.
Last but not least, another veryimportant topic that I would like
to mention here is not only thispart of creating value to generate
maybe monetary benefit, but it'salso about compliance intent.
The European Union has alreadybrought some new regulations for what
they call digital product passportand the Asset Administration Shell
provides a solution to realize it.
So meaning if we say we use AssetAdministration Shell to create digital
twins, we can also say we'll be enablingthe use of digital twins to comply
to this regulations from the EuropeanUnion with the idea to increase the
transparency on what kind of productsconsumers will be able to buy.
And I just learned some things also.
I was aware of Catena-X; I didn't evenknow that there are so many other Xs
like Manufacturing-X and Factory-X andChem-X and all these other initiatives.
That was also very interesting to me.
But all the rest as well,now let's maybe, if we can do
this still, we already filleda lot of our time actually.
So, I'd now like to ask you a bitmore specifically, like when a
developer now looks for what isAAS – what do we actually see?
What do we do?
You call it a meta-model, so wouldthat be a modelling environment or
is it just a communication standard?
And what am I technicallylooking at here?
The Asset Administration Shellprovides a meta-model, right?
But maybe before we go deeper on that,let's recall some of the requirements.
So, for a digital twin, we need arepresentation of a physical product
– and for that, we need a meta-modelthat provides the syntax: what I
will be representing as a product.
And this is what AAS will bring as well.
It has a specification called partone, which is the meta-model, so it
provides the rules on how to model adigital twin based on this standard.
The second part, which was theconnection between the digital to
the physical work, this is where theAAS also brings standardized APIs
so that whenever a developer arecreating new applications and want
to be interoperable, they can stickto this – not only the meta, but
in particular also the APIs – toensure that their applications are
communicating with other digital twinsbased on the Asset Administration Shell.
There are, of course, other elements,but let's not get deep into it.
When we go a bit deeper on what willbe in the meta-model of an Asset
Administration Shell, one thingit's very important to remember is
that you need a unique ID, right?
So, in this specification, you'llsee some explanation how the standard
will be expecting you to implementthese unique IDs or how to use them
and ensure that you find exactlythe Digital Twin you're looking for.
The second thing that I'dlike to emphasize here is the
idea of sub-models, which isexplained in the meta model of
the Asset Administration Shell.
So, sub-models is actually a conceptwe see in the Asset Administration
Shell, which will provide thestandardized pieces of content, which
is related to a specific use case orproduct lifecycle of a digital twin.
We have sub-models that describedigital nameplates of a product.
To make it even easier, just imaginethe meta-model will provide you how,
like the rules, how you model digitaltwins and the sub-model will be using
them to say, okay, if you want todescribe a specific content based on
the properties, just here are associatedthe model that you will be using it.
For example, if you take the digitaltemplate, which is a good place to
start, you will find properties likemanufacturer names, serial number,
manufacturing date, and so on.
One thing that it's importantto not forget here is, we are
talking about digital twins, so wehave to ensure that applications
are going to understand them.
As humans, whenever we see a text, wemight relate to the meaning of this
text when you read, for example, amodel, now we know what's a model,
we know what is a bike, a computerjust in the same bits and bytes.
This is where we mentioned that AASacts a bit like a meta-standard.
AAS will be, or the AssetAdministration Shell will be
using a standard called ECLASS,which is established standard for
classification in the industry, right?
And ECLASS will be providingthe dictionary, so to say, for
the properties that you can use.
So, whenever a machine sees amanufacturer name or serial number,
there will be a particular identifierdefined by ECLASS, and once this
machine reads the ICD 5 and understandsthe ECLASS and the dictionary
itself, then say, okay, this iswhat this property is talking about.
Finally enough, the very important part[apart from the meta- models, of course]
the interfaces – which should be,again, the component that allows to use
the meta-model of the AAS, or use thesubmodels containing the content of the
digital twins in a way that applicationscan not only get the data, but interact
with the digital twin by itself, right?
What I was also looking for is, howdoes this in the end instantiate?
Is that like UML modelsor what's the output?
In fact, the Asset AdministrationShell is technology-neutral, right?
We indeed use UML to describe themetamodels or even the sub-models.
Of course, when we talk aboutre-implementation, we need
something more tangible.
And of course, this is why we definedin the AAS also serialization using
technologies like JSON or XML,ensuring they can use the content of
digital twins in their applications.
Okay.
I guess we cannot really getinto this here in detail.
I mean, this is not how to model yournewly-designed car and it's produced
instances as digital twin in AAS.
This is just the introductionto what it really is.
If people want to go beyond whatwe were able to cover so far, where
should they go to find the details, tofind the organization and everything?
The easiest place to start is thewebsite of the IDTA or Industrial
Digital Twin Association,where you can find already a
lot of information to start.
But of course, we are an open sourcecommunity – so, we have the tech, the
tips to the twin top level project.
We have several GitHub repositorieswhere actually everyone is invited
and to just start and participate.
And of course, you feel free to reachout to me via LinkedIn and I'm happy
to help whenever you have questions.
Okay, and we'll include all thelinks like industrialdigitaltwin.org
and everything with thepodcast notes as usual.
Finally, famous last question: if youcould choose three key points, three key
takeaways that people should rememberfrom this episode, what would they be?
Oh yeah, sure.
The first one is the idea ofdigital twins, which is about
representing an asset digitally tofulfill requirements such as unique
identification, connectivity toits physical counterpart, but most
important, to support a real use case.
The second will be what we actuallydiscussed a lot here, which is
the Asset Administration Shell– ensuring that digital twins are
standardized and can speak withthese applications and processes.
I think technologies will only beused and adopted if they create value.
This is also valid for the AssetAdministration Shell as well.
It's about makingprocesses more efficient.
We should not forget that withthe AAS, we have ways to ensure
compliance to regulations such as theDigital Product Passport, which is
now brought by the European Union.
And of course, last but notleast, the AAS will be helping our
customers to support the businessprocess using SAP application.
All right.
Thank you.
So, if you haven't heard of DigitalTwins yet, and about the Asset
Administration Shell, and you are inthe manufacturing industries or anything
comparable: give it a try, check it out.
A lot of benefits to that,to open standards as usual.
Thank you, Thiago, for doing some veryheavy-duty explaining to the moderator
today, and thank you everyone forlistening to The Open Source Way.
If you enjoyed thisepisode, please share it.
Don't miss the next one.
We're off the regular schedule abit, but you've totally subscribed
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And you'll find us, and can subscribeto us too, on sap.com/podcasts and
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or any open source podcast client.
Thanks again and bye bye.
Thank you again, Thiago.
Bye bye.
Thank you, Karsten.
Thank you for having me here.
Bye bye.
This is our podcast series,SAP's podcast series about the
difference that open source can be.
And in each episode, we will talkwith experts about open source and
why they do it the open source way.
I'm your host, Karsten Hohage.
And in this episode, I willtalk to Thiago Weber Martins
about AAS and digital twins.
Hi, Thiago.
Nice to have you here.
Hi Karsten, thank you for having me.
It's really great to be here.
You are more than welcome.
So, let's look at who Thiago is.
Thiago is a product managerfor AAS Digital Twins at SAP.
His mission is to further developdigital twins based on standards
within business applicationsand processes to ensure
interoperability inindustrial ecosystems.
So probably between digital twins,we'll talk about that, I guess.
He is therefore involved in theIndustrial Digital Twin Association,
IDTA, to drive the Asset AdministrationShell, which we previously called AAS,
as the standard for digital twins.
He holds a PhD in mechanical engineeringfrom the Technical University in
Darmstadt, where he focused onAI approaches to such processes.
And the interesting thing isthat I grew up in Darmstadt,
which was 1970 to the late 80s.
That was probably beforeyour time, right, Thiago?
That's correct.
So, when were you in Darmstadt?
Yeah, indeed.
I mean, I still live in Darmstadt,so I studied here, did my PhD.
And interesting and maybe curiousfact, I'm born in Brazil and I was
born in a city called Petropolis.
My family has a Germanbackground, right?
And, in the past, when the first Germanimmigrants came to the city, they
started to call some building blocks orsome, parts of the city, according to
the city where they came from Germany.
And indeed, some part of thecity was called Darmstadt.
We don't know exactly wheremy family came from, but
maybe it could be Darmstadt.
So interesting, yeah.
Interesting.
And Petropolis, is that correctthat that would mean rock city?
Not really, it's rather Petros.
It's like from, you know,Pedro, like the name and yeah.
Oh ok, I thought it was from, asin petrography, the science of
describing and analyzing rocks.
Not really.
No, not really.
Okay, because otherwise, therewould have been another connect.
My original line of study was geology.
And of course we look at rocks.
But anyway, so there is no connectionto that apparently, but the
Darmstadt connection is interesting.
And still, that's notwhat we're here for.
So far, no, once we've alreadytold everyone what it means,
can you say again, AAS, thatwe were going to talk about?
What is that?
So again, AAS stands forAsset Administration Shell.
Okay, so Asset Administration Shell.
All right.
Okay.
and in short, what is it?
Maybe like in three mainkeywords or a couple of lines?
Sure.
So maybe let's startwith three keywords.
So, first keyword would be the standardfor industrial digital twins, a second
keyword would be interoperability,and the third would be Industry 4.0.
If we start with the first one, whichis the standard for industrial digital
twins – the Asset AdministrationShell, or AAS, is an industry standard
as specified in the IEC 63278.
By the way, IEC stands for InternationalElectrotechnical Commission,
which is a standardization body.
This standard is providingspecifications about industrial
digital twins, and it enables usto represent assets in a digital
representation and, [also, mostimportant] in an interoperable manner.
And this leads to my secondkeyword, which is interoperability.
Interoperability is very importantwhen we talk about digital
twins, and maybe we can discussa little bit in detail later on.
It's about ensuring that, whateverhappens across or throughout the
product lifecycle, including theassets, machines, plans, and anything
else you can name across this processcan talk to each other, and also
enabling them to talk to theircorresponding systems, let's just say
in a more science-fiction manner thatdigital twins can talk to each other.
This leads also to the lastkeyword, which was the Industry 4.0.
Digital twin is one of the keyconcepts or key technology defined
in the context of Industry 4.0.
As you might hear, Industry 4.0 standsfor the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
AAS is one of the outcomes, fromthe Plattform Industrie 4.0, which
was a project founded by the Germangovernment to support advancements
in the IT for the industry.
Okay.
Now we obviously have one thingto clarify because our working
title here for the podcastmainly contains the AAS keyword.
And I think you said digitaltwins more often than you said
Asset Administration Shell.
So, what exactly in a littlemore detail are digital twins?
Exactly.
Simply speaking, a digital twin is adigital representation of an asset.
In this sense, you can imaginean asset could be a machine or
a component of this machine.
It could be a car, a building,or even your bike; so anything
that has a value attached to it.
And now coming back tothe digital twin, yeah.
So digital twin, for example,could be a machine with its
digital twin, or you can also sayhave a digital twin of a robot.
This robot will be not only existingas a physical part, a physical object,
but it will also have a digitalor virtual representation of this
object, robot, machine, or bike.
And this digital representationwill be describing properties,
capabilities, or functionalities,status-based on the measurement data,
for example, of this physical object.
This is what we call digital twin.
However, there are some importantthings that we should remind when
we talk about digital training.
So digital twin is describing a physicalobject, or we can also call a physical
twin or its physical counterpart.
And it has one unique ID becauseyou need to say, okay, a digital
twin, a physical twin has exactlythis association between each other.
And you need like, a name, right?
Or a means to identify themselves.
By that, it's also about ensuring thecommunication of the digital twin to
its corresponding physical counterpart.
So you need the communication to ensurethat there's interaction, communication,
association between both of them.
And in this way, you can ensurethat the digital twin is replicating
the current status of the physicalobject in its product life cycle.
By the way, when we talk aboutthe product life cycle, we can
differentiate idea of digital twinsin using terms like ‘as designed’,
‘as manufactured’, or ‘as built’.
In particular, when you're early inthe product life cycle [like in the
engineering phases, design phases],we say we have ‘Digital Twin asset
as designed’ or the ‘product asdesigned’ – which would be representing
the properties of product that isyet to be built or manufactured.
So it does not existyet, only virtually.
We call it like a product type,and based on it, you can, of
course, plan and manufacture it.
And this is when we call ‘asmanufactured digital twin’
of a product, or ‘as built’.
This would be like, the particularinstances are based on this ‘as designed
digital twin’; which is produced,manufactured, has serial measurements
data of this real product, so to say,has a serial number and so on and so on.
Finally, digital twins [as yousee here by this explanation]
can be pretty complex.
In particular, we are talking aboutrepresenting real-world entities
throughout its whole existence, whichwe can call here product lifecycle.
To ensure that we implement digitaltwins currently – but not only
implement, but ensure that the industryis adopting that – we need standards.
And this is where the AAS or AssetAdministration Shell plays a role
because we need to ensure that theindustry, the manufacturing industries,
for example, will adopt and use them tocreate value within their applications.
Okay.
Can I ask you some very shortreturn questions and you try
to answer just with yes or no?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, so the general approach, asyou said, digital twins, as the name
already says, is the representationof a physical asset, basically.
So, you could compare it to theobject-oriented approach, right?
Yes.
Okay, good.
And then I see that correctly:the ‘as designed twin’ is the one
that would contain the model ID,and the ‘as manufactured’ would
contain the serial number, right?
That's correct.
Okay.
Then I got that one right as well.
And then, digital twin is a standarddefined within Industry 4.0.
I understood thatcorrectly as well, right?
In fact, not quite.
So, technology Digital Twin wasindeed one of the many defined
within the term Industry 4.0.
But in fact, the term digitaltwin was already coined maybe
by 2003 in a product lifecyclemanagement context, and we still
go maybe a little bit even earlier.
I mean, when NASA had theApollo program, whenever a
spacecraft was already in orbit.
Of course, in that time, they did nothave the computing power or performance
that we have today, so many things theyhave to try it by themselves on Earth.
And of course, it was not really adigital twin as we would define today.
But they had kind of the identicalspacecraft on Earth, and whenever there
was a problem, they went into this,so to say, replica of a spacecraft and
try to figure out, “okay, what couldbe the problem” and what could be the
maintenance or sort out this problem.
Okay, so the idea goes back to timeswhen one was still using physical twins?
Exactly.
All right, all right, interesting.
With now digital twins [not physicalanymore] being what you described, and
you did already mention that: it ismainly a thing of the manufacturing
industries – or does it go beyond that?
Or, do you have any examples who'splaying along in the IDTA and so on?
Good question.
Indeed.
I'll say from now focusing on myactivities, I do focus a lot on the
manufacturing industries, discretemanufacturing, where mostly we have
machine builders or component builders.
But in fact, the digital twintechnology is not completely limited
to the manufacturing industries.
There is also of course, automotiveindustry, aerospace, buildings,
infrastructure, many other industrysectors that are interested; or
even healthcare are interested onthe term of digital twins, because
they are looking for the benefitsthat digital twins can provide.
Coming back to the IndustrialDigital Twin Association, IDTA:
indeed, there's a focus on themanufacturing industries there.
I think that it's important to emphasizehere, it's not only part of the
manufacturing industry, but also bythe manufacturing industry themselves.
Meaning, we are collaborating,we're working together, or we can
also say co-innovating based onopen standard, which is the Asset
Administration Shell, to not onlycreate innovation, but ensure that there
is adoption in the industry as well.
And this is led by this organizationcalled Industry Digital Association
[IDTA], where giants from the industrylike ABB, Mitsubishi Electric, Siemens,
Volkswagen and then we SAP are there aswell, where we together are then setting
the standards for the digital twin incontext of, manufacturing industries.
Alright, sounds like somethingwith quite an impact.
And now, not going back all the wayto NASA in the 50s and 60s again,
but its current manifestation: thedigital twins, how did that come about?
How did everyone get on board?
So, it's indeed a very exciting topic.
No, if we don't go back that much,like, fifties, but stay on about
2011, this is where many people inthe industry, politics, even science
were having some thoughts, “okay, whatcould be the future of the industry?”.
Yeah, and particularly now talkingfrom the German industry perspective.
In this context, they released ahigh-tech strategy and the umbrella
of this Industry 4.0 topic, likeFourth Revolution or even can
call evolution of the industry.
The goal was and is indeed tocreate innovation in the industry
by bringing or merging ITtechnologies into rather physical
manufacturing, and drive digitization.
So, the vision was cyber physicalsystem, which again, you can understand
as a merging the physical with digitalworld, which of course requires highly
connected industrial productions acrosscompanies; to ensure not only more
sustainable industry, but also thatthey are more efficient, competitive.
And ensure that we are settingthe innovation for the future.
To make all this happen, the Germangovernment funded and supported
Plattform Industrie 4.0, which you cansee as an organization where industry,
science, and some associations gottogether to drive the topic Industry 4.0
and to execute this high-tech strategy.
One of the outcomes of the PlattformIndustrie 4.0 is this concept, or the
technology, Asset Administration Shell– which is standard, as mentioned before.
This is a result out of a greatcollaboration between not only the
industry itself, but science to drivethe interest in innovation industry.
In particular cultivating that, digitaltwins is one of the main components
or technology to realize Industry4.0 use cases, and the AAS in fact
is, acting like a pivotal role here.
From my own description, it's has likea meta-standard character because it
has an overarching role if you considerthe complexity of digital twins.
For describing digital twins, youneed a lot of data and this data will
be spread all over the places withina company in different locations
and backends, but also in, withinother partners of this company.
And if we even say we've seen acompany if you see how digital twins
are made, there'll be already otherstandards or concepts being used.
For example, in doing the engineeringphase hearing about automation layer
or STEP [which is again, another ISOstandard where you will find pretty
much description, the definition,how a product will be], this
would be rather the part as built.
And if you go to the manufacturing, youhear standards about OPC UA from the
OPC Foundation, which is very focusedon getting data out of machine, right?
Really real-time data and put into amodel and a model so that you can use
it for your business applications.
The one part that is missing isactually, in my opinion, the Asset
Administration Shell, because it willbe bringing all of these pieces together
and ensure that you have a continuitythroughout the product life cycle.
This is why the AAS has a meta-standardrole ensuring that this data of
digital twins are being then connectedto IT systems for example, from the
manufacturing or from the shop floor.
Finally, from where we are rightnow, this leads to the actual
creation of the IndustrialDigital Twin Association or IDTA.
Because the Plattform Industrie4.0, and I said, okay, we
have this concept, yeah?
It's currently around the time whenIDTA was planned to be established,
it was like, okay, but how are weto ensure that it's going to be
really adopted in the industry?
Then by 2021, the IDTA was founded andit was mostly led by associations like
BitKom, VDMA, ZVEI, which respectivelyrepresents the IT, electrical, and
mechanical engineering sectors.
And of course, companies like SAP,we're also part of this idea to
fund an organization like IDTA.
Okay, wow.
Sounds like a big thingwith quite a history.
There was one very particularquestion that came to my
mind when you were talking.
Are the digital twins and the AAS, arethey only used to basically describe
and manage running processes, or doesthe industry also use them to develop
new things, like implement them inthe digital twin first, and then see
how that works in the digital worldbefore they take it to the physical?
In this, I'll say it'sa stepwise approach.
From my perception right now, we areobserving that the AAS would be rather
the concept helping organizationsto implement, Digital Twins, so that
they can use it to talk to othercompanies, bringing data about the
same asset or same product, right?
But indeed, one of the visions of theconcept Asset Administration Shell as
one implementation of Digital Twinsis that, one day, when we have the
concepts established, is that youhave digital twins that are thinking
by themselves, acting by themselves,and being able to communicate with
each other – to find, for example, away to the best way to solve problems
in the shop floor, for example.
This is where it's just a bit,more even science fiction, that
is still ongoing, but we are abit far from that, to be honest.
That's going even fartherthan what I was thinking of.
But as we're in an open sourcepodcast, another return question
about the entire concept: was thatopen source from the start, or
what kind of open source is it?
I guess it's probablynot open governance, but
controlled by the IDTA, right?
Yeah.
So, of course, as PlattformIndustrie 4.0 is was part of projects
supported by the German government.
Many of the results were, tosay, open source anyways.
But I think [an] important thing tomention here is, during the process
of the establishment of the IndustrialDigital Twin Association, the idea of
open source was already in the DNA.
From there, we were already aware ifyou want to ensure that technology like
the Asset Administration Shell is goingto be adopted and used in the industry,
we need the idea of open source as anapproach to ensure that it happens.
So, in fact, the specifications ofthe Asset Administration Shell are,
we can call it as open source,which is based on the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0International or CC BY 4.0.
Of course, you also have thespecifications, you want to have them
as a software or as a code as well.
And that's why the IDTA iscollaborating with the Eclipse
Foundation when it comes reallyto the open source code, right?
And they're in the Eclipse Foundationwhere we drive the implementation of the
specifications we'll say as open source.
And in fact, in the EclipseFoundation, we established what we
call the Eclipse Digital Twin TopLevel Project, where many projects
implementing different aspects of thespecifications are working together
as open source community, not only onbehalf of IDTA, but also with people
outside of our internal community,and also people coming from other
projects to make it happen in the end.
This is why open source is sointeresting because it provides
us the means, the platform toco-innovate with other stakeholders
that are also interested on usingand establishing such a technology.
Yup, and it provides youthe justification to even
be on this podcast at all.
But that is, of course, well givenwith keywords like Creative Commons
and Eclipse Foundation, I guess.
Now, anyway, the motivation, thebenefits, I mean; I think we understand
pretty clearly it's a benefit fororganizations if their assets that
span different organizations in theprocess can digitally communicate with
a common standard with each other.
Anything beyond that, somethingone might not directly think of?
Oh, indeed.
Maybe to start answering this question,we need to emphasize that -- well, we
already talked about it -- a digitaltwin of a product will accompany the
product which is being representedby its digital twin throughout
its whole product life cycle.
And again, when I talk about productlife cycle, of course, I talk about
planning your product, designing it,planning its production, producing
it, sending it to the customer, usingit or operating it, maintaining it.
Then it's about recycling it.
So assuming that the digital twinis born with the first idea, for
example, I have a great idea fora new bike and this is where you
can imagine a digital twin is born.
Now, of course, there are otherperceptions and they are all valid,
but I think for now, let's justassume the first idea is the kickstart
for a digital twin: from this idea,during its design, finalizing the
idea of this bike and make it happenduring the manufacturing, using it.
So, there will be a lot of data beinggenerated that you have somehow to bring
it together into this digital twin.
Then we can call it as thehistory of the product.
You can tell, okay, I have thecurrent status of this product.
And of course – interesting, Ithink you also mentioned one of
your questions – it's also abouta bit, trying to find out what's
going to happen with this product.
This is where digitaltwins will be helping.
So digital twin will reflectand mirror the physical product
whenever you are on this productit will sync the product lifecycle.
As a result, digital twin will goover, not only within the company,
but will have a certain part leavethe company boundaries as well.
And to extrapolate even more, itwill be distributed within several
stakeholders of the lifecycle.
By that I mean, once I had theidea to create this bike, it's
also about trying to find out if Iproduce the parts by myself, is it
about, buying from some suppliers?
By doing that, I alsoneed to share data.
And this is all related tothis digital twins somehow.
You can have several digitaltwins of the same product,
which will be everywhere.
But you can also have just parts of it.
This makes [it] , of course, prettycomplex, but actually it's pretty
exciting as well, because now there'sidea of distributed digital twins
across or throughout several companies.
Thus, with the goal to create value,and this is of course, the idea of
this being distributed makes a bitagain, complex, but this is where
having a concept of technology thatallows you or helps you to bring
all the data together, that helpsyou say, okay, what's going with
the product will help you a lot.
And examples on how digitaltwins will bring value?
It's about, we'll reducethe development costs.
Imagine a car: so you have virtualreplicas of your car and many of
efforts that you might be doing toensure that your car is being safe.
Many of the stuff can really besupported by digital twins during
the design phase, for example, right?
It's about optimizing manufacturing,make it more efficient,
ensuring the quality of theproducts you're manufacturing.
It's also about optimizing themanufacturing or the maintenance.
I mean by that, make it alwaysworking so that you're operating it
and don't lose time for waiting untilsomebody can come by and repair it.
This is why we need also thestandards because, in the end, it's
about getting the data to work andto bring into the digital twins so
that you can make this value happen.
This is [as we discussed] where the ideaof open source, open standards will show
their strengths because at companies,you'll be willing to invest there as
there's already something to start with.
So, the burdens will be lower,effort as well, costs will be lower.
And of course, people always thinkabout risks before doing investments,
in particular with new technologies.
And this is now knowing that you haveestablished open-source components
and specifications helps a lot.
Finally, when we talk about, creatingvalue based on this idea that digital
twins are going to be, distributedacross several systems, you have
also to ensure that you trust sharingdata, you trust getting data from
someone and make the data work.
So, this is another thing that Ilike traditionally-mentioned here,
is that the industry needs also whatyou call the framework or the data
space, where they can use digitaltwin data to ensure that they are
creating value based on the process.
And this is of course, again, bysharing with their players or with
the customers to create value.
One of the most-known projectsgoing on here in Germany is
what we call Manufacture-X – inparticular, with the idea to provide
this data space for the industry.
But let's not go deeper onthis because it's certainly
a topic for another podcast.
But again, there'll be data spacesfor different industrial sectors to
address their particular requirements.
We have Factor-X for machinery,we have Catena-X for automotive.
There is Chem-X for chemistry and soon, so, we're seeing the data space.
This is where the Asset AdministrationShell, AAS, will be playing its role
to ensure interoperability between thestakeholders and ensure that they can
collaborate on top of the digital twins.
Last but not least, another veryimportant topic that I would like
to mention here is not only thispart of creating value to generate
maybe monetary benefit, but it'salso about compliance intent.
The European Union has alreadybrought some new regulations for what
they call digital product passportand the Asset Administration Shell
provides a solution to realize it.
So meaning if we say we use AssetAdministration Shell to create digital
twins, we can also say we'll be enablingthe use of digital twins to comply
to this regulations from the EuropeanUnion with the idea to increase the
transparency on what kind of productsconsumers will be able to buy.
And I just learned some things also.
I was aware of Catena-X; I didn't evenknow that there are so many other Xs
like Manufacturing-X and Factory-X andChem-X and all these other initiatives.
That was also very interesting to me.
But all the rest as well,now let's maybe, if we can do
this still, we already filleda lot of our time actually.
So, I'd now like to ask you a bitmore specifically, like when a
developer now looks for what isAAS – what do we actually see?
What do we do?
You call it a meta-model, so wouldthat be a modelling environment or
is it just a communication standard?
And what am I technicallylooking at here?
The Asset Administration Shellprovides a meta-model, right?
But maybe before we go deeper on that,let's recall some of the requirements.
So, for a digital twin, we need arepresentation of a physical product
– and for that, we need a meta-modelthat provides the syntax: what I
will be representing as a product.
And this is what AAS will bring as well.
It has a specification called partone, which is the meta-model, so it
provides the rules on how to model adigital twin based on this standard.
The second part, which was theconnection between the digital to
the physical work, this is where theAAS also brings standardized APIs
so that whenever a developer arecreating new applications and want
to be interoperable, they can stickto this – not only the meta, but
in particular also the APIs – toensure that their applications are
communicating with other digital twinsbased on the Asset Administration Shell.
There are, of course, other elements,but let's not get deep into it.
When we go a bit deeper on what willbe in the meta-model of an Asset
Administration Shell, one thingit's very important to remember is
that you need a unique ID, right?
So, in this specification, you'llsee some explanation how the standard
will be expecting you to implementthese unique IDs or how to use them
and ensure that you find exactlythe Digital Twin you're looking for.
The second thing that I'dlike to emphasize here is the
idea of sub-models, which isexplained in the meta model of
the Asset Administration Shell.
So, sub-models is actually a conceptwe see in the Asset Administration
Shell, which will provide thestandardized pieces of content, which
is related to a specific use case orproduct lifecycle of a digital twin.
We have sub-models that describedigital nameplates of a product.
To make it even easier, just imaginethe meta-model will provide you how,
like the rules, how you model digitaltwins and the sub-model will be using
them to say, okay, if you want todescribe a specific content based on
the properties, just here are associatedthe model that you will be using it.
For example, if you take the digitaltemplate, which is a good place to
start, you will find properties likemanufacturer names, serial number,
manufacturing date, and so on.
One thing that it's importantto not forget here is, we are
talking about digital twins, so wehave to ensure that applications
are going to understand them.
As humans, whenever we see a text, wemight relate to the meaning of this
text when you read, for example, amodel, now we know what's a model,
we know what is a bike, a computerjust in the same bits and bytes.
This is where we mentioned that AASacts a bit like a meta-standard.
AAS will be, or the AssetAdministration Shell will be
using a standard called ECLASS,which is established standard for
classification in the industry, right?
And ECLASS will be providingthe dictionary, so to say, for
the properties that you can use.
So, whenever a machine sees amanufacturer name or serial number,
there will be a particular identifierdefined by ECLASS, and once this
machine reads the ICD 5 and understandsthe ECLASS and the dictionary
itself, then say, okay, this iswhat this property is talking about.
Finally enough, the very important part[apart from the meta- models, of course]
the interfaces – which should be,again, the component that allows to use
the meta-model of the AAS, or use thesubmodels containing the content of the
digital twins in a way that applicationscan not only get the data, but interact
with the digital twin by itself, right?
What I was also looking for is, howdoes this in the end instantiate?
Is that like UML modelsor what's the output?
In fact, the Asset AdministrationShell is technology-neutral, right?
We indeed use UML to describe themetamodels or even the sub-models.
Of course, when we talk aboutre-implementation, we need
something more tangible.
And of course, this is why we definedin the AAS also serialization using
technologies like JSON or XML,ensuring they can use the content of
digital twins in their applications.
Okay.
I guess we cannot really getinto this here in detail.
I mean, this is not how to model yournewly-designed car and it's produced
instances as digital twin in AAS.
This is just the introductionto what it really is.
If people want to go beyond whatwe were able to cover so far, where
should they go to find the details, tofind the organization and everything?
The easiest place to start is thewebsite of the IDTA or Industrial
Digital Twin Association,where you can find already a
lot of information to start.
But of course, we are an open sourcecommunity – so, we have the tech, the
tips to the twin top level project.
We have several GitHub repositorieswhere actually everyone is invited
and to just start and participate.
And of course, you feel free to reachout to me via LinkedIn and I'm happy
to help whenever you have questions.
Okay, and we'll include all thelinks like industrialdigitaltwin.org
and everything with thepodcast notes as usual.
Finally, famous last question: if youcould choose three key points, three key
takeaways that people should rememberfrom this episode, what would they be?
Oh yeah, sure.
The first one is the idea ofdigital twins, which is about
representing an asset digitally tofulfill requirements such as unique
identification, connectivity toits physical counterpart, but most
important, to support a real use case.
The second will be what we actuallydiscussed a lot here, which is
the Asset Administration Shell– ensuring that digital twins are
standardized and can speak withthese applications and processes.
I think technologies will only beused and adopted if they create value.
This is also valid for the AssetAdministration Shell as well.
It's about makingprocesses more efficient.
We should not forget that withthe AAS, we have ways to ensure
compliance to regulations such as theDigital Product Passport, which is
now brought by the European Union.
And of course, last but notleast, the AAS will be helping our
customers to support the businessprocess using SAP application.
All right.
Thank you.
So, if you haven't heard of DigitalTwins yet, and about the Asset
Administration Shell, and you are inthe manufacturing industries or anything
comparable: give it a try, check it out.
A lot of benefits to that,to open standards as usual.
Thank you, Thiago, for doing some veryheavy-duty explaining to the moderator
today, and thank you everyone forlistening to The Open Source Way.
If you enjoyed thisepisode, please share it.
Don't miss the next one.
We're off the regular schedule abit, but you've totally subscribed
and everything, so you'll find out.
And you'll find us, and can subscribeto us too, on sap.com/podcasts and
in all places where you usually findyour podcasts, be that Apple, Spotify,
or any open source podcast client.
Thanks again and bye bye.
Thank you again, Thiago.
Bye bye.
Thank you, Karsten.
Thank you for having me here.
Bye bye.
