# When Operation Technology Meets Information Technology: Challenges and Opportunities
## 6 Conclusions and Future Works  
In this work, we showcase Eclipse BaSyx AAS using a time synchronization scenario in I4.0, in which the main focus concerns IT/OT integration. The contributions of our work are threefold. First of all, by combining Eclipse BaSyx AAS with OPC UA, we enable interoperable communication between the assets of the manufacturing environment, particularly visual cameras. This aspect grants IT/OT integration while maintaining the isolation of two worlds from each other. Secondly, we employ TSN as a mechanism to create different subsets of cameras that are synchronized with each other by need. In the end, we apply the aforementioned concepts and technologies to a real use-case scenario depicted by an industrial partner, where multiple cameras need synchronization to visually recognize packages streaming on a conveyor belt, in which the converging belts may run at different speeds. The proposed solution allows us to achieve a complex coordination goal starting from the IT but implemented in the OT, granting flexibility and reconfigurability of the industrial plant, thanks to the adoption of Eclipse BaSyx AAS, while reducing human intervention to a minimum.  
Following considerations about the limitations of the academic works present in the literature, future work will be focused on the application of the proposed architecture to different manufacturing scenarios that require synchronization between devices and/or production machines. Moreover, more experimental tests in different companies will be required to validate the architecture and the results: the main problem is in fact related to the accuracy in the measurements of manual human intervention times, which depend on a number of variables not predictable a priori.  
Conceptualization, D.B., A.G., A.M. and L.R.; Methodology, D.B., A.G., A.M. and L.R.; Writing--original draft, D.B., A.G., A.M. and L.R.; Writing--review and editing, D.B., F.C., A.G., A.M., M.P. and L.R.; Project administration, F.C. and M.P.; Funding acquisition, F.C. and M.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work was partially supported by the project SERICS (PE00000014) under the NRRP MUR program funded by the EU-NGEU.  
Not applicable.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.  
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:  
\begin{tabular}{l l} I4.0 & Industry 4.0 \\ OT & Operational Technology \\ IT & Information Technology \\ SMEs & Small and medium-sized enterprises \\ RAMI 4.0 & Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 \\ AAS & Asset Administration Shell \\ OPC UA & Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture \\ TSN & Time-sensitive Networking \\ FPGA & Field-Programmable Gate Array \\ ASIC & Application-Specific Integrated Circuits \\ VAB & Virtual Automation Bus \\ PLC & Programmable Logic Controller \\ IEC & International Electrotechnical Commission \\ IoT & Internet of Things \\ IIoT & Industrial Internet of Things \\ MQTT & Message Queue Telemetry Transport \\ REST & Representational state transfer \\ HTTP & Hypertext Transfer Protocol \\ \end{tabular}