Product-oriented Product-Process-Resource Asset Network and its Representation in AutomationML for Asset Administration Shell

TL;DR

PoPAN addresses the lack of lifecycle-wide product representation in current industrial standards by centering the product structure and integrating remanufacturing/disassembly into the engineering model. It extends PAN with a product-oriented view, enabling unified assembly/disassembly and lifecycle data capture, serialized in AutomationML and bound to the Asset Administration Shell. The approach is demonstrated on an EV battery disassembly/remanufacturing use-case, illustrating how the model supports planning recycling workflows and data collection to improve future designs. The work advances circular economy goals by providing a scalable, interoperable framework for product lifecycle management across design, production, and end-of-life processes.

Abstract

Current products, especially in the automotive sector, pose complex technical systems having a multi-disciplinary mechatronic nature. Industrial standards supporting system engineering and production typically (i) address the production phase only, but do not cover the complete product life cycle, and (ii) focus on production processes and resources rather than the products themselves. The presented approach is motivated by incorporating the impacts of the end-of-life phase of the product life cycle into the engineering phase. This paper proposes a modeling approach coming up from the Product-Process-Resource (PPR) modeling paradigm. It combines requirements on (i) respecting the product structure as a basis for the model, and (ii) incorporates repairing, remanufacturing, or upcycling within cyber-physical production systems. The proposed model called PoPAN should accompany the product during the entire life cycle as a digital shadow encapsulated within the Asset Administration Shell of a product. To facilitate the adoption of the proposed paradigm, the paper also proposes serialization of the model in the AutomationML data format. The model is demonstrated on a use-case for disassembling electric vehicle batteries to support their remanufacturing for stationary battery applications.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: The proposed PoPAN model for a generic product (on the right), which has been created based on the Product Structure model (on the left). The PoPAN graph is substantiated by products, which have assigned processes, and the edges (their types, orientation, and arrow types) have a crucial role.
• Figure 2: System Unit Classes of the AutomationML description for PoPAN representation.
• Figure 3: Example of a generic product structure in the AutomationML Editor.
• Figure 4: Example of a specific PoPAN represented in the AutomationML data format. It includes Internal Elements (IE) for Resources (blue), Edges of PoPAN (grey), Process (green), and Products (salmon).
• Figure 5: A KUKA robot is lifting the lid of an EV battery from a BMW i3 in the Industry 4.0 Testbed at CIIRC