  A central vision of the Internet of Things is the representation of the
physical world in a consistent virtual environment. Especially in the context
of smart factories the connection of the different, heterogeneous production
modules through a digital shop floor promises faster conversion rates,
data-driven maintenance or automated machine configurations for use cases,
which have not been known at design time. Nevertheless, these scenarios demand
IoT representations of all participating machines and components, which
requires high installation efforts and hardware adjustments.
  We propose an incremental process for bringing the shop floor closer to the
IoT vision. Currently the majority of systems, components or parts are not yet
connected with the internet and might not even provide the possibility to be
technically equipped with sensors. However, those could be essential parts for
a realistic digital shop floor representation. We, therefore, propose Virtual
Representations, which are capable of independently calculating a physical
object's condition by dynamically collecting and interpreting already available
data through RESTful Web APIs. The internal logic of such Virtual
Representations are further adjustable at runtime, since changes to its
respective physical object, its environment or updates to the resource itself
should not cause any downtime.
