Virtual prototyping and validation of CPPS within a new software framework

As a result of the growing demand for highly customized and individual products, companies need to enable flexible and intelligent manufacturing systems. Such new production systems, so called "Cyber Physical Productions Systems" (CPPS) aim the vision of interlinked and autonomous production. The research project VIB-SHP envisions controller validation of manufacturing system covering aspects of asynchronous communicating, intelligent and autonomous acting production equipment and a service based production IT. To enable manufacturing system designers to validate CPPS, a software framework for virtual prototyping has been developed. A multi-disciplinary construction kit integrates discipline specific models and manages them in a PLM solution. The usage of the construction kit enables manufacturing designers to apply virtual technologies and ease the integration in the production-IT. The presented approach resolves the sequential design process for the development of mechanical, electric and software elements and ensures the consistency of these models. With the help of a BOM- and signal-based alignment of the discipline specific models in an integrated mechatronic product model, the communication of design status and changes is improved. The re-use of already specified and designed modules enable quick behavior modeling, code evaluation as well as tangible user interaction with the virtualized assembly system.