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The Project You’re Plan­ning? Someone Else Is Working on It in the OI4.

“too long,
didn’t read”

1

A real problem, a missing piece or a use case worth testing is enough to get started. You do not need to arrive with a finished project plan, a defined output or even a clear idea of how large the initia­tive might become. The first step is finding out whether others are dealing with the same ques­tion and what can be done together. From there, the work can become a project, a hackathon, a demon­strator, a publi­ca­tion, an event or simply an exchange that gives everyone involved a much clearer direc­tion.

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Members rarely come to the table empty-handed. They bring expe­ri­ence from previous projects, existing concepts, code, compo­nents, test results and lessons from approaches that did not work. Putting those pieces together means a new initia­tive can start much further ahead. One member may already have solved the tech­nical part another is currently strug­gling with, while someone else brings the use case needed to test it prop­erly. Instead of several compa­nies spending time solving the same first prob­lems inde­pen­dently, the group can concen­trate on what is genuinely still missing.

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The work happens in a prec­om­pet­i­tive space where people from different compa­nies can focus on a problem they all care about. They compare approaches, bring their own exper­tise and build on each other’s work. OI4 creates the setting around them, connects the right people and keeps the initia­tive moving through coor­di­na­tion, collab­o­ra­tion plat­forms, meet­ings, commu­ni­ca­tion, events and what­ever else the activity needs as it develops. The group gets to spend more of its time on the reason everyone came together in the first place: trying things, learning from each other and getting some­thing useful done.

talkers talk
we imple­ment

Lucas Wolf, Tech­nical Content Manager @Open Industry 4.0 Alliance

September 5th

HOW AN IDEA BECOMES AN OI4 PROJECT.

Some OI4 projects begin during a work­group call. Others start at an event, in a conver­sa­tion between members, or with a message from someone who has been thinking about a problem for a while. The starting point can be surpris­ingly small: a gap in a stan­dard, a use case worth testing, a tech­nical ques­tion that keeps coming back, or simply the feeling that some­thing should work better than it currently does. Once that idea reaches a few people who recog­nize the same issue, the conver­sa­tion changes. What looked like one company’s problem becomes some­thing worth exploring together.

FROM A SHARED PROBLEM TO SOME­THING WORTH TRYING.

The first step is usually very informal. People compare what they have already seen, what they have tried, where they got stuck and whether the issue appears often enough to deserve more atten­tion. That exchange already has value because it brings different perspec­tives into the same room, espe­cially when the topic sits between tech­nolo­gies, vendors or parts of the value chain. One partic­i­pant may have imple­men­ta­tion expe­ri­ence, another may under­stand the stan­dard behind it, and someone else may know the oper­a­tional pain from the shop floor. OI4 can bring those perspec­tives together and help turn a loose conver­sa­tion into some­thing the group can actu­ally work on.

From there, the group needs to under­stand what would actu­ally move the topic forward. Some­times the next step is obvious. In other cases, the problem first needs to be narrowed down, split into smaller ques­tions or tested against what members already know and have avail­able. That is where the initial exchange becomes useful work. The group starts sepa­rating assump­tions from real obsta­cles, finds over­laps between existing approaches and gets a clearer sense of where joint effort can make a differ­ence.

THE RESULT CAN TAKE DIFFERENT SHAPES.

Once that direc­tion is clear, the work can develop in very different ways. Some ideas become formal OI4 projects. Others lead to publi­ca­tions, guide­lines, demon­stra­tors, hackathons or prac­tical exam­ples that can be reused by the wider commu­nity. Some remain smaller and still do exactly what they needed to do by helping members under­stand a problem, compare approaches and decide what deserves further work.

That variety is visible in what members have already built together. The Soft­ware Defined Automa­tion project turned a shared tech­nical ques­tion into a working demon­strator. Work around the Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shell has taken several forms, from trans­fer­ring AAS across company bound­aries to exploring how stan­dard­ized product infor­ma­tion can support a Digital Product Pass­port. Other projects have focused on very specific indus­trial ques­tions, such as measuring energy consump­tion at work­piece level or exploring the economic value of Digital Twins. These are only a few exam­ples from a much broader OI4 project port­folio.

Some­times the work is delib­er­ately hands-on. Members meet for hackathons, bring tech­nolo­gies, code and existing compo­nents with them and see what they can make work together. The same prin­ciple can scale into larger events. At the OI4 Inno­va­tion Event for the Process Industry, for example, prac­tical demon­stra­tors brought topics such as Digital Twins, the AAS, Soft­ware Defined Automa­tion and digital quality docu­ments into one place where people could see and discuss them directly. Trade fairs offer another setting to take collab­o­ra­tive work out of the project room and put it in front of the industry.

In other cases, the useful result is knowl­edge that can travel further than the orig­inal group. Members have jointly produced whitepa­pers and guide­lines around topics such as the Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shell, Digital Product Pass­ports, Open Edge Computing and other areas where compa­nies benefit from a common under­standing. These results become avail­able through the OI4 down­loads so the next company looking at the topic has some­thing concrete to start with. There are many more exam­ples across projects, publi­ca­tions, hackathons and events, and new formats continue to emerge as the topics change.

Some­times the most useful result is reached much earlier. A few compa­nies compare what they have tried, discover that they are solving the same problem from different angles and leave with a clearer direc­tion. That can be enough. If the idea has more poten­tial, it can grow from there.

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Starting some­thing new inside a large orga­ni­za­tion often comes with a lot of prepa­ra­tion before the tech­nical work can begin. The right people have to be found, respon­si­bil­i­ties need to be clar­i­fied, several depart­ments may need to align, and the idea can easily spend weeks moving through internal processes before anyone has tested whether it works.

There is also a more basic advan­tage to working through a commu­nity: you do not have to start from zero. Another member may already have tested part of the idea, built a compo­nent, written code, created a concept or learned the hard way that one approach does not work. Those pieces can be compared and brought together instead of every company repeating the same first steps on its own. A proto­type from one member, expe­ri­ence from another and a suit­able use case from a third can suddenly give an idea a very different starting point.

OI4 creates the envi­ron­ment where that can happen. It connects members who are working on similar ques­tions, brings addi­tional exper­tise into the conver­sa­tion and helps shape an idea into some­thing people can actu­ally work on together. Once an initia­tive gets moving, OI4 keeps the collab­o­ra­tion orga­nized. Depending on what is needed, this can include setting up the project struc­ture and collab­o­ra­tion plat­forms, coor­di­nating meet­ings and partic­i­pants, orga­nizing hackathons or events, supporting publi­ca­tions and commu­ni­ca­tion, and helping results reach the wider commu­nity.

There is also conti­nuity in that role. Ideas rarely develop neatly from first conver­sa­tion to finished result without changing direc­tion, losing partic­i­pants, finding new ones or discov­ering another ques­tion along the way. OI4 can keep the thread together, connect new people when their exper­tise becomes rele­vant and help a small activity grow when the group decides there is more to do.

That work around the project gives the partic­i­pating members more room for the part they came for. They can compare what already exists, decide what can be reused, put different pieces together and spend their time on the part that is genuinely still missing.

This becomes partic­u­larly useful for prob­lems that cross company bound­aries. Inter­op­er­ability, digital twins, indus­trial data and automa­tion rarely sit neatly inside one orga­ni­za­tion or one product port­folio. Bringing several perspec­tives together makes it possible to test an idea beyond one internal setup and learn whether it still works when other tech­nolo­gies, require­ments and expe­ri­ences enter the picture.

MAYBE YOUR IDEA IS NEXT.

Most ideas do not arrive looking like projects. They show up as some­thing smaller. A recur­ring problem. A tech­nical ques­tion nobody has quite answered. A half-built solu­tion that works in one envi­ron­ment but still needs another piece. Some­thing that has been sitting in a meeting note for months because nobody had the time, the people or the right setting to push it further.

That is enough to start a conver­sa­tion at OI4.

Bring the problem. Bring the half-finished idea. Bring the thing you have already tried twice and still cannot quite make work. There may be someone in the commu­nity who has already solved one part of it, someone else who has seen the same limi­ta­tion, and a third person with exactly the use case needed to test whether the whole thing holds together.

That is often how the next project begins.

And maybe the next one is yours. No Member? No problem. Working with OI4 is also possible with a project part­ner­ship.

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