Simulation – Digital Factory
Offline Programming
Forced by ever shorter product life cycles and caused by the increasing cost pressure in the global competition, the requirements to be met by manufacturing companies become more and more complex.
Optimized processes – that span the entire value-added chain – are essential in keeping one step ahead of the competition.
Flexibility, dependability and quality need to be guaranteed to exactly meet present and future market needs.
- Real-time simulations will provide you with objective, quickly retrievable and data-driven answers to complex questions on intricate issues.
- Starting with every individual machine of your production facility, not only separate production steps or interconnected production processes but also entire production programs will be granularly reproduced via the virtual model. Therefore the model is capable to emulate the whole production cycle of your products by considering the smallest detail – beginning with the supply of various raw materials right through to the handover of shipments ready for dispatch and delivery.
- Based on this, you will be able to optimize the capacity utilization of your elementary resources while still mired in the planning stages of the renewal/modernization measures to be taken. As a result, previously undiscovered potentials of planned respectively existing process sequences and production programs might be identified aiming to optimize their utilization.
- In addition to that, the virtual model will assist you in detecting potential efficiency losses within the entire production program at all relevant levels (timely provisioning of resources, maintenance cycles, arrangement of operating resources, buffer times, capacity utilization, etc.).
- In parallel with the optimized utilization of individual resources, the entire value chain of your production program will be brought to perfection, which also incorporates the logistical dynamics of your warehousing system.
- Combined with efficient sequence planning for your backlog of orders, not only cycle times of individual workpieces will be minimized. Moreover, the functionality of your warehousing logistics will be optimized.
- Statistics, charts and tables will assist you in visually analyzing throughput volumes and resource utilization. Furthermore statistical numbers will support you in weighing tolerances and buffers.
- GANTT or Sankey charts will provide highly useful visual monitoring tools. Furthermore, you will be provided with a comprehensive kit of analysis and diagnostic tools whose analytical output will be made accessible, for example, in the form of custom HTML reports.
- Virtual models and simulations will typically generate 3D graphics and movies depicting your production facility. This will provide you with detailed data and images in the course of the active project phase, and will moreover support you in justifying cost-intensive measures in the eyes of decision-makers and investors.
Since the detailed visualization of your production facility within the virtual model correlates with reality, the possibility of “plug and play” opens up.
Based on this, virtual but realistic model data can be directly transferred to the physical plant in the course of commissioning on site.
Real-time simulations based on a virtual model open up for the possibility to go through “what-if” scenarios aiming to optimize the entire production program let alone particular production steps. In this respect, downtimes will be minimized, while the line utilization will be brought to the optimum:
- shortening of commissioning times on site;
- comprehensively tested logics;
- adherence to delivery dates all down-the-line.
Time and money will be wasted if conceptual errors occur while your production facility will be put into operation. For this reason, using the virtual model to test your plant in advance seems to be appropriate to exclude costly side effects even before the effective activation:
- application of original components;
- original controls and their respective software;
- writing and verifying of robot programs.
Simulations on the virtual model should help you to avoid misdirected investments. Real-time experiments based on simulations can be performed way ahead of the construction of a production facility.
As a consequence, you will be able to
- verify the definite feasibility of your project,
- to illustrate optimal control strategies and to
- visualize complex interaction patterns of isolated production areas.
