Erich Barnstedt
Chief Architect Standards, Consortia & Industrial IoT
Microsoft Corporation
erichb[AT]microsoft.com
This year at SPS 2023, the OPC Foundation (OPCF), together with the Clean Energy and Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) as well as the Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) showcased an EU Digital Product Passport (DPP) prototype, containing a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Smart Manufacturing Profile™ based on OPC UA. In addition, the DPP leverages the Asset Administration Shell Exchange file format (AASX) as well as the Asset Administration Shell REST (AAS REST) interface from the Plattform Industrie 4.0. The DPP was designed using the recently updated CESMII Smart Manufacturing Profile Designer™ and the DPP prototype was made available open-source on GitHub.
Two Asset Administration Shell Sub-Model-Templates were modeled with OPC UA, specifically the Digital Nameplate and Product Carbon Footprint. The resulting OPC UA Information Model can be loaded into a standard OPC UA server or into an AAS Repository as a Nodeset file or as an AASX file and accessed through the AAS Repository’s REST interface.
The prototype was developed in just 3 days by Randy Armstrong of the OPC Foundation and Erich Barnstedt of Microsoft Corporation and successfully demonstrated the novel approach of combining the large existing OPC UA eco-system, fostering several commercial, yet freely available OPC UA modeling tools, with the standardized REST interface of the Asset Administration Shell, built for information exchange along a manufacturing supply chain.
The prototype was on display at the OPC Foundation booth and was the most popular display during the entire show.
