With the help of virtual commissioning, PIA Automation Austria GmbH was able to reduce the downtime for optimizing a customer system from nine to three weeks. This increases efficiency in project planning and implementation and reduces the amount of personnel and resources required.
PIA Automation Austria GmbH is part of the PIA Group, that manufactures highly automated production systems at twelve locations in seven countries. PIA serves customers in mobility, industrial, consumer goods and healthcare sectors with a focus on innovative and reliable production systems with efficient manufacturing processes.
As part of a project to increase production on an existing assembly line in the automotive sector, PIA Automation broke new ground together with Siemens. “The conventional reconstruction and the extensive reprogramming of the system would have resulted in an industry-standard downtime of around nine weeks, that would have meant a considerable loss of production for our customer. We therefore opted for virtual commissioning of the entire system and were thus able to reduce the production downtime to just three weeks,” reports Wolfgang Weiss, Head of Engineering, PIA Automation Austria GmbH.
“Our virtual commissioning solution combines automation technology with PLM software, that is part of the Siemens Xcelerator platform,” explains Simon Holler, Key Account Manager Automotive at Siemens Austria. Siemens Xcelerator enables customers to access a curated portfolio of networked hardware and software and benefit from a powerful partner ecosystem for further development and implementation of solutions. As a long-standing Siemens ecosystem partner, HATEC Automatisationsges.mbH, that has been involved in virtual commissioning for some time, initially supported PIA Automation in setting up the digital twin model and providing the engineering team with specialist skills.
The interaction of different digital twins ensures a continuous signal flow and enables all processes and components of a production line to be precisely simulated. Thanks to the comprehensive process standardization at PIA Automation, the creation of digital twins could be automated in many cases, for example by automatically linking variables in different programs based on their consistent names.
© PIA AutomationPrecise simulation of production through the interaction of different digital twins.
The digital twin of PLC controller, for example a SIMATIC S7-1500, is reproduced in the Automation Model. Programming is carried out via the TIA portal. With TIA (Totally Integrated Automation), Siemens controllers can be programmed quickly and easily textually or graphically and emulated with S7-PLCSIM Advanced thanks to the high degree of standardization. The electrical behavior model, mapped by the SIMIT simulation platform, processes the signals from the control system, for example to move a drive. The recorded values, e.g. of axes, are transmitted to Process Simulate. This allows 3D models of products and equipment such as industrial robots to be mapped in order to validate or optimize complex manufacturing processes and to carry out virtual commissioning.
© PIA AutomationOptimize production systems faster with digital twin.
Basically: the later an error is detected, the exponentially greater is the damage. However, this can easily be avoided with the help of virtual commissioning. “During the validation process, we realized that we would not be able to achieve the desired robot cycle time in conjunction with the system with the existing programming. Without a digital twin, we would not have noticed this until commissioning and the system would have been down for longer than planned. We rewrote the PLC control and the robot program and were therefore able to meet the customer’s requirements of halving the cycle time at an early stage,” explains Weiss.
A key advantage of virtual commissioning is that no hardware has to be replicated, that is neither sustainable nor resource-efficient due to the single-use material. For pre-commissioning, the system manufacturer does not usually have all the prototypes of the various products that are to be manufactured on the final system. A test run with “real” products therefore takes place very late in the commissioning process. With virtual commissioning, on the other hand, a 3D model of the product that will be produced can be used. In this specific project, 200 complex production parts in various product variants were tested in advance in the virtual world.
“In the virtual world, we can use an infinite number of components and still ensure greater sustainability at the start of production because there is less waste in the real world. We can also reduce transport routes and business trips by a third or more, that saves costs and leads to CO2 reductions,” says Weiss, summarizing the benefits.
The space required in the machine manufacturer’s production hall is also minimized because the entire system does not have to be set up, allowing several projects to be carried out at the same time. By combining automation technology, simulation and visualization of the real hardware, all scenarios and configurations can be checked and validated right down to the last detail.
At PIA Automation, the project to optimize the assembly line – that can be regarded as one of the most complex of its kind at present, due to the high degree of automation involved – has led to the establishment of a “Digital Twin Lab” equipped with software solutions from Siemens.
“We will accelerate the further development of digital twins, which should also ensure the cost- and time-efficient planning and commissioning of production systems with automated manufacturing processes in the future. With digitalization and innovative technology European companies can hold their own against the competition abroad in long term. The aim is to break the routines and redesign conventional processes with the help of flexible and efficient digitalization solutions. In the course of this successful project, PIA has taken another important step forward,” Weiss is convinced.
