Asset Administration Shell (AAS)

The Asset Administration Shell (AAS), a key concept of Industry 4.0 (or “Industrie 4.0” in German), is used to describe an asset electronically in a standardized manner. Its purpose is to exchange asset-related data among industrial assets and between assets and production orchestration systems or engineering tools. This ARC Insight explains how the AAS is built, indicates some of the available documents on the subject, and provides a few application examples. As we’ll see, the first real application is the use of the AAS as an electronic label and description of an asset.