Joint forces for Digital Product Passport (DPP)

Major standardization associations and initiatives partner to create the best of breed system architecture to support the upcoming Digital Product Passport (DPP) by combining the best aspects of the Asset Administration Shell and OPC UA.

The Clean Energy and Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII), the Labs Network Industrie 4.0 (LNI 4.0), the Digital Twin Consortium, the ECLASS e.V., the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA), the OPC Foundation (OPCF), the VDMA and the ZVEI have joined forced to create a best of breed system architecture to support the upcoming Digital Product Passport (DPP) by combining the best aspects of the Asset Administration Shell, OPC UA and other related technologies. By making use of CESMII’s Smart Manufacturing Profiles, which are modelled with OPC UA, and integrating them with the semantics of the Asset Administration Shell and ECLASS, the rich and existing ecosystem of OPC UA modelling tools can be leveraged to build DPPs. To access the resulting DPPs, the existing REST interfaces of both OPC UA and the Asset Admin Shell can be used and an integration with the Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) is also possible, creating an international dataspace.
“I am glad we managed to build consensus with so many of the leading Industry 4.0 consortia and institutes to create this better-together architecture”, said Erich Barnstedt, Senior Director & Architect Industrial Standards, Corporate Standards Group at Microsoft Corporation. “With this approach, companies can use their existing investment in OPC UA technology and use it to easily build Digital Product Passports for their industry, while making them available in their supply chain via standardized interfaces, data models, data formats and semantics. I believe this will give the DPP technology the necessary adoption boost it will need to meet the 2027 deadline set by the European Commission.”
“The Plattform Industrie 4.0 has been promoting the interoperability of the Asset Admin Shell, OPC UA and related technologies in their Reference Architecture for Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) for over a decade”, said Thomas Hahn, coordinating the International Manufacturing-X activities worldwide, VP OPC Foundation, Siemens Fellow. “Therefore, we are delighted that key stakeholders and industry consortia have come together to build this joint architecture including results from the DPP4.0 initiative (https://dpp40.eu/) to accelerate and to support the adoption of the Digital Product Passport (DPP). We are confident that this will drive cost of deployment and operations for the DPP down and enable the use of DPP technology also for small- and medium-sized manufacturers on a worldwide basis.”

Statement IDTA
IDTA (Industrial Digital Twin Association) welcomes all initiatives that promotes the global adoption of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). In collaboration with the OPC Foundation, the combination of AAS and OPC UA technologies delivers significant benefits for Industry 4.0 solutions. According to Matthias Boelke, Chairman of IDTA, “The information modeling capabilities and the OT connectivity of OPC UA, coupled with the comprehensive asset representation and life-cycle focus of AAS, result in a powerful architecture not only for the Digital Product Passport (DPP) but for Industry 4.0 applications in general.” This collaboration of well-known associations not only accelerates DPP adoption but also enhances
interoperability, efficiency, and standardization in industrial digitalization processes. By leveraging the strengths of both AAS and OPC UA, companies can easily build DPPs and make them available in their supply chain through standardized interfaces with harmonized data models. This collaboration is a crucial step towards the widespread implementation of Industry 4.0 solutions.”

Statement OPC Foundation
“The signal of close technical harmonization and cooperation between the standardization organizations (SDO’s) involved is critically important in order to avoid double standardization in the interests of the industry. I therefore expressly welcome the idea of taking the best from all technologies and contributing to a joint solution,” says Stefan Hoppe, President OPC Foundation. “The OPC Foundation has been standardizing the interoperability of interfaces for information exchange for decades – it’s our DNA”. OPC UA includes a powerful modeling language and has already integrated a wide range of transport options for information and IT security which scales from the sensor to the cloud. With the OPC Foundation Cloud Initiative, this interoperability is applied within edge and cloud solutions such as Digital Twins, Metaverse etc. We look forward to coordinating with other organizations on the application for DPP and DataSpaces.”

Statement CESMII

“CESMII is delighted to see this extraordinary alignment of global semantic interoperability initiatives – based on industry standards! This harmonization is the result of a multi-year effort, and will pave the way for manufacturers to build more robust, more open and resilient architectures”, says John Dyck, CEO of CESMII – The Smart Manufacturing Institute. “While this will certainly impact Digital Product Passport use cases, it will also have enormous impact in enabling manufacturing operations to participate more effectively in a real time supply chain data exchange!”

Statement VDMA
“The VDMA is pleased about the successful harmonization of the two technologies OPC UA and AAS to facilitate the application of the Digital Product Passport as well as further Industrie 4.0 use-cases” says Andreas Faath, Managing Director Machine Information Interoperability (MII): “The combination of both technologies reduces implementation hurdles especially for SMEs and increases adaptation. With this initiative a big step to fulfill the need of the mechanical engineering industry for a harmonized ecosystem interoperability is done. The VDMA released over 100 standardized interfaces that will be usable additionally within the AAS based on OPC UA Information Models.

Statement DTC
“The Digital Twin Consortium welcomes this initiative to consolidate and merge the digital twin technologies developed and maintained by the OPC Foundation, the Industrial Digital Twin Association, and the International Data Spaces Association,” said Bill Hoffman, Chairman and CEO of Object Management Group. “We have developed and maintained an open-source reference implementation of the Asset Admin Shell Repository for years. This implementation already leverages OPC UA technology, and we’re excited to collaborate with the organizations involved to develop this implementation further.”

Statement ECLASS
“The semantic dictionary from ECLASS perfectly matches the features and properties required to describe products. The seamless technical integration into other standards in particular leads to genuine interoperability. In this combination, all DPP requirements can be implemented without any loss of information.” This is explained by Thorsten Kroke, General Manager of ECLASS e. V. “ECLASS has been active since 2000 and is used successfully in various industries. Some DPP examples are already executable.”

Statement LNI 4.0

“The precompetitive and non-profit Industrie 4.0 association LNI 4.0 supports from the beginning interoperability for industrial automation systems and operates since 2016 several testbeds that validate industrial technical solutions in this area”, says Dr. Dominik Rohrmus, CTO LNI. “Semantic interoperability is at the core of Industrie 4.0 and with the important steps of interoperability among OPC UA, AAS and ECLASS we enable data flow from the shop floor to the business apps to fulfill use cases like DPP. LNI 4.0 actively supports this important step forward by its AAS and Edge Management testbed activities.”

Statement ZVEI

“Companies need certainty that different interoperability concepts can work together to enable smooth interaction. Accordingly, we welcome the initiative of this joint activity”, says Gunther Koschnick, Director Industry at ZVEI. “The introduction of the digital product passport presents companies with challenges regarding the documentation and provision of DPP-information that can be overcome through collaboration and integration between the technologies. To support the international standardization activities in the area of the digital product passport, in which the ZVEI is involved with its member companies, it is also essential to be able to draw a complete picture of the interaction of the various technologies. Furthermore, the seamless integration of technologies enables the selection of the optimal solution for specific Industry 4.0 applications and the simple exchange of information via appropriate interfaces. With a common basis and the description of architectural relationships, companies can select the right technology for the given use-case, such as controlling systems and processes, enabling machine-to-machine communication or making information available across companies in order to meet the requirements of the digital product passport.“