Plattform Industrie 4.0 and Industrial Internet Consortium Deepen Collaboration

The Industrial
Internet Consortium® (IIC™), now incorporating OpenFog, and Plattform
Industrie 4.0 today announced that they have deepened their
relationship. The two organizations work together to drive global
interoperability and advance the IIoT. Leaders from each organization
will be available to discuss their joint projects at Hannover Messe.

The first of these new joint projects undertaken by the two
organizations will focus on security, edge computing, Industrie 4.0
components and digital twin. To demonstrate and validate that the
concepts and standards work, we will produce a whitepaper on a common
understanding of digital twins as well as set-up joint testbeds. IIC
will be in Hall 8, Stand D23 and Plattform Industrie 4.0 will be in Hall
8, Stand D24.

“Plattform Industrie 4.0 was the first agreement we signed with a
national organization three years ago and our joint work has been
working extremely well,” said IIC Executive Director Dr. Richard Soley.
“We enjoy shared goals for the manufacturing space and complement each
other well with Plattform Industrie 4.0’s depth of knowledge in
manufacturing and supply chain and our horizontal view across many
industries.”

“We are more than happy to be able to continue the success story of our
collaboration,” said Plattform Industrie 4.0 Secretary General Henning
Banthien. “This is the right time to take another big step towards
implementation of Industrie 4.0. The asset administration shell is
already being put into practice and we are looking forward to launch
more joint testbeds to make Industrie 4.0 a reality for companies big
and small.”

“This is good news for the industry that IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0
are working together. There is an evolution of digital twin going on
right now and it’s important that the two most influential organizations
driving IIoT and Industrie 4.0 are so closely aligned,” said SAP
President Digital Supply Chain & Manufacturing Hala Zeine. “Industry
standards only work if everyone agrees to the same standard. Ensuring
global collaboration makes a lot of sense and is good for the entire
supply chain.”

In addition to their joint projects, IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0
plan to launch joint testbeds. One potential testbed complementary to
both organizations is the IIC Smart Factory Web testbed, operated by IIC
since September 2016 and led by Fraunhofer IOSB and KETI, with
participants Microsoft and SAP. This testbed investigates integrated
architectures and technologies for a web of distributed smart factories
based upon the international standards OPC UA and AutomationML. Next,
digital twins based on the concepts of the asset administration shell of
the Plattform Industrie 4.0 will be evaluated. This testbed will be
demonstrated at the IIC member pavilion at Hannover Messe.

At the Plattform Industrie 4.0 pavilion the first interoperable asset
administration shells developed conformant to the development-ready
specification(s) of the asset administration shell of the Plattform
Industrie 4.0 will be presented. There are several talks at the Forum
Industrie 4.0 for deepening the knowledge of the asset administration
shell as a clearly defined implementation of a digital twin. To mention
only some of them: “The Administration Shell on its way to a dependable
specification” from Dr. Michael Hoffmeister (Festo), “Semantics for the
Asset Administration Shell – what is still to be done” from Dr. Birgit
Boss (Bosch) and “Package file format for the exchange of information in
the value chain of Industrie 4.0” from Dr. Marco Mendes (Schneider
Electric). The panel discussion Talk@3 on 2nd April “The Digital Twin –
Interoperability into the Cloud” will give further insight.

The two organizations first demonstrated their collaboration at Hannover
Messe 2017 where they presented a joint real-time demonstration that
showed the IIC Industrial Internet Security Framework and the concepts
of secure cooperation in cross company environments developed by the
Plattform Industrie 4.0. Mimicking a real-world, multi-vendor,
distributed environment, the demonstration integrated demos from more
than 20 IIC member companies and Plattform Industrie 4.0 partner
companies spanning multiple booths at Hannover Messe and remote sites
around the world.

In 2018, IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0 published a joint whitepaper − Architecture
Alignment and Interoperability – which documents the highly
complementary nature of, and details the mapping and alignment between,
their two leading IIoT reference architecture models: the IIC Industrial
Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA) and the Plattform Industrie 4.0
Reference Architectural Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0).

About the Plattform Industrie 4.0

Plattform Industrie 4.0 is the central network to advance digital
transformation towards Industry 4.0. In close cooperation with politics,
industry, science, associations and trade unions, it develops and
coordinates information and networking services in order to make
Industrie 4.0 solutions better known among companies and to deploy them
on site. As one of the largest international and national networks, it
supports companies – particularly medium-sized companies – in
implementing Industrie 4.0. It provides companies with decisive impulses
through examples of company practices from across Germany and other
countries as well as concrete recommendations for action and test
environments. The platform’s numerous international co-operations
underscore its leading role in international discussions on Industrie
4.0. For further information, visit www.plattform-i40.de.

About the Industrial Internet Consortium

The Industrial Internet Consortium, now incorporating OpenFog, is the
world’s leading membership program transforming business and society by
accelerating the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The IIC delivers
a trustworthy IIoT in which the world’s systems and devices are securely
connected and controlled to deliver transformational outcomes. The
Industrial Internet Consortium is a program of the Object Management
Group (OMG). For more information, visit www.iiconsortium.org.

Note to editors: Industrial Internet Consortium is a registered
trademark of OMG. For a listing of all OMG trademarks, visit www.omg.org/legal/tm_list.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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