Implementation of Digital Twin for Engine Block Manufacturing Processes

Roman Bambura,Luboš Kotek,Miroslav Dado,Marek Šolc

doi:10.3390/app10186578

Abstract

The digital twin (DT) is undergoing an increase in interest from both an academic and industrial perspective. Although many authors proposed and described various frameworks for DT implementation in the manufacturing industry context, there is an absence of real-life implementation studies reported in the available literature. The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate feasibility of the DT implementation under real conditions of a production plant that is specializing in manufacturing of the aluminum components for the automotive industry. The implementation framework of the DT for engine block manufacturing processes consists of three layers: physical layer, virtual layer and information-processing layer. A simulation model was created using the Tecnomatix Plant Simulation (TPS) software. In order to obtain real-time status data of the production line, programmable logic control (PLC) sensors were used for raw data acquisition. To increase production line productivity, the algorithm for bottlenecks detection was developed and implemented into the DT. Despite the fact that the implementation process is still under development and only partial results are presented in this paper, the DT seems to be a prospective real-time optimization tool for the industrial partner.

Highlights

The digital twin (DT) is becoming progressively more interesting to academia and industry.The main questions are: what technologies are needed to create DT and how can the DT improve manufacturing processes? Commonly characterized as containing a physical entity, a virtual counterpart, and the data connections in between, the DT is increasingly being examined as a way of advancing the efficiency of the physical assets. [1]
The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of DT implementation under real conditions of a production plant specializing in manufacturing of the aluminum components for the automotive industry
An agreement agreement between between the real real and and virtual virtual production production line line can can be be observed observed when when comparing comparing real real data data from from the the production production line with the Gantt chart generated by the DT

Summary

Introduction

The digital twin (DT) is becoming progressively more interesting to academia and industry.The main questions are: what technologies are needed to create DT and how can the DT improve manufacturing processes? Commonly characterized as containing a physical entity, a virtual counterpart, and the data connections in between, the DT is increasingly being examined as a way of advancing the efficiency of the physical assets. [1]. The digital twin (DT) is becoming progressively more interesting to academia and industry. The main questions are: what technologies are needed to create DT and how can the DT improve manufacturing processes? The DT is a digital description of an operating product or service that consist of its preferred features, attributes, circumstances, and ways of behaving through replicas, information, and data within a single or even across multiple life-cycle phases [2]. Manufacturing and fully integrated DTs are suggested in the literature. Currently operated DTs in industrial practice still need attention [4]. According to Qi et al [5] regardless of an intense ambition from small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to integrate DT into their everyday business, a majority of the SMEs are inexperienced with the essential technologies and

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