SMC joins IDTA in support of a digital future
In July 2024, global automation product specialist SMC became a member of the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA). Joining such a powerful community will reap great advantages for the ongoing digital future of the company and its customers. In particular, IDTA membership will ensure SMC always remains abreast of the latest digital twin advances, while simultaneously allowing the company to help shape digital-twin developments in support of Industry 4.0 success.
Digital twin: the perfect match
A digital twin connects physical industrial products with the digital world, characterising their features and behaviour. However, for the successful implementation and international dissemination of this core Industry 4.0 technology, a common understanding of all industry stakeholders, associations and research organisations is necessary.
The IDTA acts as a central point of contact for all interest groups. Notably, it provides the necessary specifications for the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), the standard digital representation of an asset and the cornerstone of Industry 4.0 component interoperability within Industry 4.0 systems. The AAS is hugely important for the digitalisation of value chains worldwide.
Sharing the benefits
To facilitate the seamless data sharing of its components with customers and partners, SMC is currently developing a solution based on the AAS, which stores all relevant product information throughout its lifecycle, including 3D CAD data. The company now intends to collaborate closely with the IDTA community on standardisation and the development of relevant digital-twin sub-models.
“Our ‘smart asset’ project will oversee the development of digital twins for SMC’s circa 700,000 components,” explains Oliver Prang, Expert Digital Business Development Product Marketing, SMC Germany. “The ambition is to help customers expedite their engineering processes, reduce failures in the manual creation of master data and increase quality over the lifecycle of the machine. To meet this goal we need standard exchange formats for the digital data. The AAS and its simplified data management attributes is the optimal solution for our customers and partners worldwide.”
SMC has a reputation for working closely with its customers, but the addition of digital-twin support also provides users of SMC products with the reliable tools necessary to undertake tasks with a degree of autonomy if such an approach is preferrable for specific projects.
IDTA membership ultimately provides important added value for both SMC and its customers, with the AAS in particular delivering a pathway to competitive advantage. Moving forward, SMC looks forward to providing an important contribution to the digital future of industrial processes around the world.
2024-sep-11
