Towards Efficient Asset-Based Configuration Management with a PPR Asset Directory

In Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS) engineering, domain experts design Product-Process-Resource (PPR) assets, defined in shared engineering artifacts, like system plans and tool data. Configuration management of assets should provide a consistent integration of these stakeholder views as a basis for risk and quality management. However, without a suitable data structure, collecting and analyzing the stakeholder views on an asset, scattered over changing engineering artifacts, is often incomplete and time-consuming. In this paper, we introduce the PPR Asset Directory, a conceptual model based on the standards Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell and the AutomationML Component, for representing, integrating, and efficiently analyzing (i) multiple stakeholders views in engineering artifacts that define an asset; (ii) dependencies between stakeholder views on an asset; and (iii) dependencies between assets. A PPR Asset Directory for a robot cell in automotive manufacturing shows the feasibility of efficient configuration management queries.