Digital Twins for Sustainable Production: Modelling and Simulation of a Production System Towards a Digital Twin
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Examensarbete för masterexamen
Modellbyggare
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This master thesis is a part of a pilot study of a larger EU-funded Industrial project
"Twin Goals" by European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in collaboration
with Chalmers University of Technology. The primary purpose of this study
was to investigate the possibility of using a Digital Twin for ensuring production
sustainability. Previous research has indicated the potential of using Cyber-physical
system (CPS) based Digital Twins for remotely monitoring and controlling the production
processes by establishing a bi-directional flow of information between the
virtual entities and the physical assets. This project attempts to use this information
exchange to perform a real-time optimization of the production processes and
increase the sustainability of the production system. The project was carried out
in a test-facility for manufacturing drones at the Stena Industry Innovation Lab
(SII-Lab), Lindholmen, Gothenburg.
This thesis followed a methodology that combines triangulation research methodology
and banks methodology. The literature study was carried out to identify suitable
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring Triple Bottom Line (TBL)
aspects of sustainability namely economical, ecological and social aspects. Qualitative
and quantitative studies were performed during model building and the analysis
phases. The DES model of the Drone factory was built on Siemens Plant Simulation
platform with four scenarios that included, the current state (AS-IS scenario),
an additional product variant (base scenario), a parallel station (experimental scenario
1), and a potential “operative digital twin” scenario with the dynamically
re-balanced station (experimental scenario 2). The scenarios were evaluated by conducting
experiments for varying customer demands and pallet sizes. Among the
four scenarios, the results of experimental scenario 2 showed a positive impact both
in the economic and environmental aspects of TBL. The operative scenario exhibited
an ability to autonomously utilize the production resources ensuring that the
production load on the system was evenly distributed among all the processing stations.
This scenario decreased the waste and non-value adding activities in the
process thereby contributing towards a higher throughput, decreased lead times and
improved material and energy efficiencies. Enabling a data exchange between this
operative scenario and the physical assets we can create a potential Digital Twin for
production sustainability.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
Digital Twin, Discrete Event Simulation, Triple Bottom Line,, Sustainability, Key Performance Indicators.