The activities "currently underway at PLCopen with regard to the Asset Administration Shell - AAS for short - stand out," says Eelco van der Wal, Managing Director of PLCopen. The reason for this is that the physical aspects of the assets in eClass are defined within this shell. However, the functionalities of these assets and components are not defined. However, many of the functionalities used in the shell are already specified by PLCopen - for example for motion control, safety and communication. PLCopen has specified these software functionalities by defining function block libraries. "These PLCopen specifications provide a clearly defined number of functionalities that form a good basis for the AAS," says van der Wal. In addition, PLCopen has defined a framework that relates to the definition of function blocks, with the aim of creating user-defined libraries. In this way, larger functionalities can be encapsulated and a higher degree of integration can be achieved. Van der Wal: "This facilitates the engineering of a new machine and ensures a better decomposition and reusable structure in software development, which in turn facilitates the maintenance and addition of new wishes. In order to be able to access these functionalities in the AAS and ultimately make them available on a controller, we are currently defining a set of function blocks. The programmer can then use these function blocks to access the relevant information in a harmonized way."

PLCopen is also working on a document that describes the integration of PLCopen and PackML via the PLCopen OPC UA profile. If the basic rules for application development listed in this document are followed, it will be much easier to create a harmonized interface to a machine and integrate machines into production lines in a standardized way - based on OMAC PackML State Machine, Modes and Packtags. "With the combination of OPC UA functionality for browsing, you can even search for new functionalities and add them as the basis for a new application program," enthuses van der Wal.