Virtual Commissioning of Modular Automation Systems

A new concept in modular automation systems and their virtual engineering is presented. The new approach is aimed to provide support for the reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) approach to automation. Manufacturing industries are moving to the concept of RMS to fulfill the great demand to deliver greater levels of product customisation at a higher quality and at reduced cost. RMS allows the manufacturing companies to quickly implement innovative design changes in their products and produce a greater number of product variants on leaner production lines with shorter times to market. The aim of this research is to enable production machines to be more easily and cost effectively built and subsequently reconfigurable through the adoption of a component-based approach to their implementation utilising virtual manufacturing tools. It is proposed that through the decomposition of manufacturing machines into standardized mechanisms and their associated data structures, a RMS can be designed and implemented. Research conducted at Loughborough University into the development of concepts and tools to support the global engineering of component-based reconfigurable manufacturing automation systems in the automotive production domain is described in this paper. A collaborative framework to integrate and coordinate the various engineering activities of globally distributed engineering teams involved in the design, implementation, operation and diagnosis of production machinery is also described.