TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED SIMULATION AND VIRTUAL COMMISSIONING ENVIRONMENT FOR CONTROLS OF MATERIAL HANDLING SYSTEMS

Modern material handling systems (MHS) are complex systems which are controlled by various control units on different automation levels. The design of the MHS facility layout and the development of the control units require the application of different CAE tools but simulation and virtual commissioning does currently not play a significant role because there is no integrated simulation-based verification environment for all project stages and control levels available. This paper presents an approach towards an integrated simulation-based verification tool for all stages of an MHS project. During the first stage a material flow simulation of the plant model is conducted to analyze key performance indicators. This model is reused to test and verify the function of control units such as material flow controllers or programmable logic controllers. An automatic equivalence checking tool identifies differences between simulation runs. An important benefit: One common simulation model is used for all project stages.