Digital Manufacturing and Virtual Commissioning of Intelligent Factories and Industry 4.0 Systems Using Graph-Based Design Languages

The development process for the new kind of Intelligent Factories and Industry 4.0 systems requires a different approach than before, because the complexity and flexibility of all industrial systems increases. The development process has to ensure that every product is manufactured at the end with an efficient production process. Under these conditions, data management and the use of simulations become more important. Furthermore, the couplings and interrelations between product and means of production play a key role in the areas of digital factory and virtual commissioning. Only by using both simulation methods it will become apparent how the product can be manufactured. But to create a virtual commissioning model, a lot of data is needed from the entire development process. This data is usually generated interdisciplinarily by people from various departments. However, today's form of data management as information transfer is only conditionally suitable for efficiently building up a digital factory as a simulation model or even making a virtual commissioning of a production system. Due to the fact that in the development process a lot of IT systems with interfaces inbetween are used, loss of information is quite common experience. This is where graph-based design languages come in. Using this modeling language approach, the product is completely digitally described and then the means of production are derived from the product properties automatically. This creates a consistent digital product life cycle from the initial product requirements to virtual commissioning.