Empowering Digital Twin for Industry 4.0 using metaheuristic optimization algorithms: case study PCB drilling optimization

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, has been characterized by novel concepts introduction in manufacturing systems that enable smart factories with vertically and horizontally communication to improve their performance. Many virtual systems allow to predict foul conditions, save energy, study special cases, and so on, yet they need to implement new digital tools that allow developing manufacturing process in a better manner. As a result, Digital-Twin platforms are a good alternative since they are virtual models that could receive online and offline data. Thus, programmed algorithms can be evaluated to know the performance of the manufacturing process. These virtualizations and interconnections between elements of the manufacturing process become important components with an increasing role in dealing with supply, production times, and delivery chains as they run in parallel and find optimal performance before implementing these conditions into the real system. This study focuses on the use of a Digital-Twin that integrates a metaheuristic optimization and a direct Simulink model for printed circuit boards (PCB) design and processing focused on the drilling process. The results show that metaheuristic optimization can be integrated into the Digital-Twin concept as part of the production system into the drilling process. In the first part, it shows that depending on the penalization the optimization focuses on the lower path and forgets on changing the tools, yet as the penalization raises it focuses on finishing drilling with one tool before changing. Second, it is important where on the PCB it starts the drilling, with less time depending on each plaque. Third, it can be observed that using optimization can triple the amount of PCBs that can be manufactured. Finally, on an 8-hr run the Digital-Twin that didn’t use optimization can only work with three different designs, differently with optimization it can have 7-8 changes in the PCB design.