The development of energy efficient production systems such as machine tools is a complex process. All specialised departments must work interdisciplinary during the design process in order to achieve an optimal result. In addition to the mechanical aspects, e.g., lightweight construction, the optimization of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programs of tooling machines plays an increasingly important role. By optimizing the programs in terms of energy efficiency, the energy consumption of a machine can be significantly reduced. However, energy consumption depends on many parameters, so the optimization process is complex and a matter of all engineering disciplines working together. By using Digital Twins of tooling machines, simulations can be used to perform many parameter studies for optimizing energy consumption. However, the generation of Digital Twins of production systems is very expensive if they are to represent all relevant features of a production system. Through an IT system of networked software programs and using AutomationML as a special data interface these Digital Twins of machine tools can be generated automatically. The article describes the structure and function of this IT system and how it will be efficient within all involved engineering disciplines.
The interdisciplinary development of smart factories and cyber-physical systems CPS shows the weaknesses of classical development methods. For example, the communication of the interdisciplinary participants in the development process of CPS is difficult due to a lack of cross-domain language comprehension. At the same time, the functional complexity of the systems to be developed increases and they act operationally as independent CPSs. And it is not only the product that needs to be developed, but also the manufacturing processes are complex. The use of graph-based design languages offers a technical solution to these challenges. The UML-based structures offer a cross-domain language understanding for all those involved in the interdisciplinary development process. Simulations are required for the rapid and successful development of new products. Depending on the functional scope, graphical simulations of the production equipment are used to simulate the manufacturing processes as a digital factory or a virtual commissioning simulation. Due to the high number of functional changes during the development process, it makes sense to automatically generate the simulation modelling as digital twins of the products or means of production from the graph-based design languages. The paper describes how digital twins are automatically generated using AutomationML according to the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) or the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA).
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