  For a broader adoption of AI in industrial production, adequate
infrastructure capabilities are crucial. This includes easing the integration
of AI with industrial devices, support for distributed deployment, monitoring,
and consistent system configuration. Existing IIoT platforms still lack
required capabilities to flexibly integrate reusable AI services and relevant
standards such as Asset Administration Shells or OPC UA in an open,
ecosystem-based manner. This is exactly what our next level Intelligent
Industrial Production Ecosphere (IIP-Ecosphere) platform addresses, employing a
highly configurable low-code based approach. In this paper, we introduce the
design of this platform and discuss an early evaluation in terms of a
demonstrator for AI-enabled visual quality inspection. This is complemented by
insights and lessons learned during this early evaluation activity.
