Product Digital Twin Ontology: A Pivot for Bridging Asset Administration Shell-based and Ontology-based Digital Product Passports

By: Quang-Duy Nguyen, Fatima Danash, Arnab Sinha, Chokri Mraidha

Abstract

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is an essential conceptual technology enabling circular manufacturing (CM). It provides a mechanism for stakeholders in CM to manage the entire lifecycle of individual products, from material sourcing to their end-of-life, while also promoting reduction, reuse, and recycling strategies. To implement the DPP, many industrial organizations rely on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and the ECLASS vocabulary. On the one hand, the combination of these two standards is robust, as they are well-defined, easy to use, and supported by a broad industrial community. On the other hand, many other partners in both public and private sectors are exploring alternative solutions that are open, more distributed, and knowledge-centric, such as ontology-based approaches. To harmonize these two perspectives, this paper proposes a new ontology, called Product Digital Twin Ontology (PDTO), and a method that uses PDTO as the pivot for converting between AAS-based and ontology-based DPP representations.

Keywords

Industry 5.0, Circular Manufacturing, Digital Product Passport, Ontology, Asset Administration Shell

Cite as:

Quang-Duy Nguyen, Fatima Danash, Arnab Sinha, Chokri Mraidha, “Product Digital Twin Ontology: A Pivot for Bridging Asset Administration Shell-based and Ontology-based Digital Product Passports”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 25, no. 3 ( 2026), pp. 3:267-280, doi:10.5381/jot.2026.25.3.a21.