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 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.