Digital and Physical Testbed for Production Logistics Operations

Digitalisation and automation of existing processes are key factors for competitive industry, but still logistics operations are often dominated by manual work. A shift towards higher degree of automation within existing infrastructure is often challenged by high cost and complex processes, thus a return-on-investment is hardly achievable within decent time. The experience has shown that it is hard to assess all restrictions and interactions between new and old components before any new equipment or infrastructure is implemented and put into operation. This paper presents and discusses if the usage of digital twins representing and simulating a physical part can support the related assessing and decision-making processes. In this context, this paper presents a production logistics test-bed includes physical devices, an IoT-infrastructure and simulation software for innovation as well as operational management purposes.