# When Operation Technology Meets Information Technology: Challenges and Opportunities
## 1 Introduction  
The Industry 4.0 (14.0) paradigm represents one of the major industrial turning points of the XXI century [1]. Many challenges are derived from Industry 4.0, from new technology integration to the creation of new service-oriented businesses [2]. However, we argue that the rise of interconnection between heterogeneous systems in manufacturing Operational Technologies (OT) is the basis for this industrial revolution [3]. Machines, devices, and production lines compliant with the 14.0 paradigm will be capable of collecting data on their state and behavior and, most of all, communicating with each other in order to achieve levels of coordination and collaboration on a scale that has been unforeseeable to date [4]. The final goal is to feed simulation models and/or digital twins to investigate operating scenarios and provide decision support or optimization [5]. Several benefits are expected from this approach, mostly concerning enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of the production process, making it a major contribution in terms of achieving a more sustainable economy and a reduced environmental impact [6]. However, as usual, there are no free lunches in technology, and pursuing the 14.0 objectives also opens the floor to some major challenges, among which is the opening of OT infrastructure to communicate with Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and the Internet. This is an issue that, to be solved effectively, requires new architectural approaches. To the best of our knowledge, the discussion on the technological enablers and possible solutions to such problems is still very fragmented, often bound to proprietary platforms or only partially addressing the problem. The goal of this manuscript, in line with the scope of the special issue \"State-of-the-Art Future Internet Technology in Italy 2022-2023\", is to report on the lessons learned and the experience gained by taking part in industrial research projects with some manufacturing companies located in the Emilia-Romagna region, which is one of the main manufacturing districts in Italy. The regional government traditionally exploits EU funds, devoting them to regional development and launch programs ([[https://fesr.regione.emilia-romagna.it/erdf](https://fesr.regione.emilia-romagna.it/erdf)]([https://fesr.regione.emilia-romagna.it/erdf](https://fesr.regione.emilia-romagna.it/erdf)), accessed on 29 December 2022) with the aim of supporting research projects to study medium- to long-term problems jointly between universities and companies. Moreover, more recently, the national government also funded the creation in Bologna (the capital city of the region) of the Competence Center of Big-Data Innovation and Research Excellence (Bi-Rex) in Industry 4.0 ([[https://bi-rex.it/en/home-page-eng/](https://bi-rex.it/en/home-page-eng/)]([https://bi-rex.it/en/home-page-eng/](https://bi-rex.it/en/home-page-eng/)), accessed on 29 December 2022). In this manuscript, we will present the general architecture of an industrial environment designed to manage the integration of the IT and OT by exploiting the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) [7]. We will show, in particular, how this technology can act as a gateway to decouple the IT and OT worlds while still allowing them to communicate, thus addressing the challenges previously described. This architecture and the example provided stem from the experience gained in collaborating with manufacturing companies in industrial research projects, in the framework of the programs mentioned above. The high-level discussion of the role of the AAS and the architecture that it may support will be complemented in the last part of the manuscript with a simple use case, which will be used as a proof-of-concept of the described solution. In particular, we will describe and discuss a scenario where multiple cameras require synchronization to achieve an OT goal. This use case gives us the chance to show how the AAS may support the achievement of a complex coordination goal, which starts from the IT but is implemented in the OT.