Software in Loop Virtual Commissioning at Volvo Cars Torslanda

Abstract

With Industry 4.0 looming large, factories have never felt so much pressure to keep up with the growing competitiveness to be digitally competent. Production systems are in the limelight like never before to produce products and deliver them to the market as early as possible. A critical amount of time is spent on physical commissioning when a new station or a line is introduced. To reduce this, Virtual Commissioning can be performed where the entire station can be commissioned virtually and checked for its correctness even before stepping foot into the factory. In this thesis, a firm step has been taken towards standardizing the procedure of Virtual Commissioning. The station studied in this thesis is a spot welding station comprising of five ABB robots, two fixtures and turntables. The software used in this thesis are Siemens Process Simulate, TIA portal and PLCSIM Advanced. A software in the loop(SiL) Virtual Commissioning has been performed on the station and steps followed to achieve Virtual Commissioning have been documented. Apart from creating a step by step procedure, standards have been introduced in the naming of objects in Process Simulate and the procedure of resetting safety has been standardized. Apart from commissioning the station virtually, Siemens package has been benchmarked with WinMod software. The working of sequence planner, a software developed by Chalmers university has been illustrated in this thesis work.