Development of a simulative approach in order to estimate the impact of smart services on a production system

Abstract

The increasing digitalisation and development of the fourth industrial revolution have created new opportunities in the B2B manufacturing industry. These opportunities come in the form of smart services, which are made possible by the interconnectedness of machines and products and the collection and analysis of data. However, there is uncertainty among potential users about the benefits of these smart services for their production systems. This paper aims to address this uncertainty by developing a simulation model that quantifies the impact of a smart service on a production system, using monetary benefit as a key performance indicator. To do so, the influence of a smart service on a production system is analysed and a generic production system model is developed. The generic model can then be used to analyse different smart service configurations and production systems to examine the effect of the smart service. This is demonstrated through the application of the simulation method to a use case studying the benefit of intelligent quality control and predictive maintenance.