Architecture for managing AAS-based business processes

Abstract

Industries frequently encounter the need to orchestrate services provided by devices as business processes. These industrial business process models need to meet Industry 4.0 (I4.0) specifications to handle unpredictable scenarios in the manufacturing process. Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is considered the cornerstone of interoperability between machines and applications that compose manufacturing systems. AAS facilitates the digitization of physical things (assets) for virtual representation, turning an object into an I4.0 component. This paper investigates the usage of AAS in the context of business process orchestration and a proposal is presented based on those drawbacks. The contributions of this paper are 1) Present an architecture for the management of AAS-based business processes. 2) Introduce an AAS Submodel template that enables the description and registration of the RestServices of an asset. 3) Present a plugin for Camunda Modeler that enables the Service-Discovery mechanism from a chosen AAS repository and maps assets services into BPMN Service-Tasks. And, 4) Outline opportunities for future work between AAS and business process management systems with a primary focus on context-aware capabilities for enhancing the dynamicity of workflows.