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Trans­fer­ring AAS Across Compa­nies: Secure and Seam­less Handover

Why this project
matters and for who

The moment a company starts using the Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shell (AAS) to exchange data with part­ners, prac­tical ques­tions emerge. How should AAS owner­ship be trans­ferred? Is it better to refer­ence or import it? What happens to the AAS ID? Where should it be regis­tered?

This project focuses on solving exactly these ques­tions. We look at how to keep AASs trace­able across systems, when to use instance or type AAS, how to securely share oper­a­tional data, and how to manage product updates through AAS-based change noti­fi­ca­tions.

These are real chal­lenges faced by compa­nies in connected supply chains. Addressing them is key to making indus­trial data exchange work in prac­tice.

the team
that deliv­ered

What we
made happen

To explore and address the chal­lenges of cross-company AAS usage, we have taken a hands-on approach through a series of collab­o­ra­tive initia­tives:

  • We orga­nized multiple hackathons to vali­date key concepts and foster commu­nity engage­ment.
  • We imple­mented the “Cross-Enter­prise AAS Transfer” feature to enable seam­less handover of digital twins between stake­holders.
  • To demon­strate the value of having a dedi­cated AAS on the customer side, we built a use case for goods-in inspec­tion at the fictional “Next Bike Factory”. Here, the storage loca­tion of deliv­ered compo­nents is written directly into the AAS of each compo­nent. This demon­strator is avail­able as open source on GitHub.
  • We also devel­oped a Product Change Noti­fi­ca­tion (PCN) demon­strator, using the AAS frame­work and a dedi­cated PCN submodel. This imple­men­ta­tion is like­wise open source and acces­sible to the commu­nity.
Explore the PCN Demon­strator

#better
together

This demon­strator shows that Asset Admin­is­tra­tion Shells can move across company bound­aries without losing struc­ture or meaning. By enabling transfer between part­ners, we built a foun­da­tion for collab­o­ra­tion that reaches beyond isolated pilots and single vendor setups.

The value lies in its open­ness: partic­i­pants can work with the same AAS, adapt them to their own needs, and extend them for new use cases. What starts as data exchange can grow into life­cycle manage­ment, service inte­gra­tion, or compli­ance support.

This is not just a tech­nical proof, but an invi­ta­tion to co-create. Together we can make digital twins portable across compa­nies, turning frag­mented processes into connected, scal­able solu­tions.

Inter­ested in joining or learning more?

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