Hierarchical Simulation of Production Systems--A Co-Simulation approach to integrate single manufacturing cells into production plants

摘要

"Industrie 4.0" and the "Internet of things" postulate more flexibility and modularity in the configuration and control of collaborative production systems. This paper introduces co-simulation as a means to evaluate dynamic plant behavior more accurately by applying simulation models of different levels of detail. The concept of the co-simulation approach is outlined in detail and illustrated with a concrete example that contains models implemented in different tools that follow different evaluation strategies. A study on different synchronization configurations shows that the master algorithm of such a co-simulation requires advanced evaluation capability to enable the correct co-evaluation of simulation models that differ in their internal strategies how to handle the progress in time - namely event-based, time-discrete and continuously.