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REALISING THE OPEN VIRTUAL COMMISSIONING OF MODULAR AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

To address the challenges in the automotive industry posed by the need to rapidly manufacture more 
 product variants, and the resultant need for more adaptable production systems, radical changes are 
 now required in the way in which such systems are developed and implemented. In this context, two 
 enabling approaches for achieving more agile manufacturing, namely modular automation systems 
 and virtual commissioning, are briefly reviewed in this contribution. Ongoing research conducted at 
 Loughborough University which aims to provide a modular approach to automation systems design 
 coupled with a virtual engineering toolset for the (re)configuration of such manufacturing 
 automation systems is reported. The problems faced in the virtual commissioning of modular 
 automation systems are outlined. AutomationML - an emerging neutral data format which has 
 potential to address integration problems is discussed. The paper proposes and illustrates a 
 collaborative framework in which AutomationML is adopted for the data exchange and data 
 representation of related models to enable efficient open virtual prototype construction and virtual 
 commissioning of modular automation systems. A case study is provided to show how to create the 
 data model based on AutomationML for describing a modular automation system.