An industrial production scenario as prerequisite for applying intelligent solutions

Abstract

Besides many initiatives for making manufacturing and production more intelligent, the processes in the industrial productions are still mostly traditional. The paper presents a scenario providing prerequisites for applying intelligent solutions. The lean universal control concept presented in the paper supports almost any kind of automation devices such as robot arms, PLC, and numerical control machine tools. Due to its open architecture, the universal control system serves as a base of intelligent solutions supporting the production. A graphical workflow notation for modeling the control programs is combined with automated checking which helps the human developers identifying and preventing rule violations already in the design process of the control application programs. In a further step, the control programs can first be tested with simulated devices. The visualization blends simulated and real devices controlled by the control application programs. This fosters the human users to monitor and validate the behavior of the devices. It supports a save commissioning of real devices. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020.