Demands on Virtual Representation of Physical Industrie 4.0 Components

Industrie 4.0 as one of the leading research and development initiatives for factory automation systems envisions a hierarchy of Industrie 4.0 components that exhibit a generic structure and behavior related to its utilization within production system life cycles. The components are equipped with an administration shell containing a virtual representation of the component. But up to now it is still unclear on which layers of a production system Industrie 4.0 components can be found with which granularity and what are the relevant information to be modeled within the administration shell. The System Engineering (SE) plays a significant role in the Industrie 4.0 scenario. In order to align SE modeling with the new smart factory automation environment, this paper intends to meaningful Industrie 4.0 components and identifies information relevant from the viewpoint of production system engineering and control.