TOWARDS A DIGITAL TWIN FOR CLOUD MANUFACTURING-CASE STUDY

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a new manufacturing paradigm designed to enable manufacturing enterprise to share their resources and capabilities. Prior to any real-life change in the system, for CMfg it is important to anticipate and optimize the response of the system through simulation. Digital Twins (DT) is a simulation method for this paradigm that is different from existing simulation methods in two ways. It is a virtual copy of the system containing all the components and can connect to the controller in real time. The goal of this work is to develop a DT for an educational manufacturing cell. The educational manufacturing cell is a FESTO Reconfigurable Mechatronics System (RMS). The cell has four stations that uses pallets to transport the product on the conveyor belt and assembles a part of the product. The Siemens Process Simulate: TECNOMATIX, was used to create the DT of the system. The system is modeled in a CAD program and then imported into TECNOMATIX Process Simulate, where it is programmed to replicate the processes.