A digital twin modeling method for production resources of shop floor

The smart shop floor is the basic unit to realize intelligent manufacturing. Digital twin (DT) technology is a virtual presentation of the physical world and provides model support for shop floor layout, production scheduling, and production simulation. However, the complex connection and interaction of multiple devices, materials, and information poses a great challenge for the design and production simulation of the smart shop floor, and it is a major difficulty in the application of DT technology to build a multi-scale DT model of shop floor resources to accurately simulate the manufacturing system and guide the actual production process. Inspired by this need, this paper presents a multi-scale, multi-level digital twin modeling method for production resources of shop floor. First, the DT model of production resources is formally represented as four parts: geometric model, physical model, behavioral model, and rule model. Second, for implementing the interaction of different production resources, the connection and interaction mechanism is proposed. Last, taking the DT model of a micro-assembly shop floor as an example, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified, and a prototype system is developed. The implementation of the micro-assembly shop floor application case provides engineers with guidance for building a reliable, reusable DT model of production resources.