Plattform Industrie 4.0 (Germany) and CESMII (USA) want to jointly address similar challenges and needs in connection with Industrie 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing in the future.

Plattform Industrie 4.0 promotes the development of Industrie 4.0 in Germany by developing pre-competitive concepts, recommendations and use cases for practical application. CESMII promotes smart manufacturing in the US by supporting pre-competitive research and development, providing tools and testing grounds for new technologies in the form of public-private partnerships, and creating content for training a next generation of smart manufacturers.

Cooperation in two core areas

The collaboration will focus primarily on technology standardization and workforce qualification.

Technology standardization is critical to ensure that pre-competitive technology in smart manufacturing is interoperable across different IT/OT systems. Workforce skills development is important to continue the path of innovation and drive adoption.

John Dyck, CEO of CESMII, appreciates the joint progress since June 2020: "Both sides have invested a lot of time to understand each other's approaches and national context. We have now reached a point where we can begin to define concrete activities. It is important to us that our efforts also address the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises, especially to recover from Covid-19 and create new jobs in the future. The Industry 4.0 platform and CESMII also see great potential for greater environmental sustainability in the digital transformation of production, as we point out in our joint position paper."

Shared video demonstrator

An important achievement was the agreement on the technology and terminology of the technical solutions of the two initiatives in order to ensure the interoperability of assets across countries and domains. The Smart Manufacturing Profiles (SM Profiles from CESMII) and the Asset Administration Shell (AAS from Plattform Industrie 4.0) enable the exchange of information between partners in value creation networks. The exchange of information is realized on a standardized basis along the entire life cycle of an asset. "The SM profiles and AAS have a high degree of synergy effects. Both implementations are harmonized. Our video demonstrator for the Asset Administration Shell provides an initial insight," explains Dr. Dominik Rohrmus, CTO of the Labs Network Industrie 4.0, on behalf of Plattform Industrie 4.0. The video demonstrator can be seen at Hannover Messe 2021 and shows CESMII's Smart Manufacturing Profiles and the Industrie 4.0 Asset Administration Shell have a high degree of interoperability. Furthermore, Plattform Industrie 4.0 and CESMII have agreed to implement the technologies in their existing testbeds.