The digital magic of “turning the real into the imaginary”

The establishment of physical production lines will bring many challenges such as cost, efficiency and flexibility, and digital technology is like the magic of “turning the real into the virtual”, which can subvert the entire process of research and development, commissioning and operation and maintenance. Based on Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Machine Expert Twin (EMET) software, Van der Lande was able to build digital twins of automated baggage detection lines in the virtual world that operate exactly as the real line.

5SHX0845F0001 During the research and development phase, EMET software transformed the traditional “waterfall” physical hardware development process into an “agile” development process, that is, the virtual inspection line was built at the beginning of the design of the baggage inspection line at Vanderlande Airport, and the physical simulation of the PLC was carried out at the same time during the construction process to continuously optimize the design. More importantly, through the virtual production line, the overall effect of the project can be viewed as early as possible, avoiding the possibility of later rework modifications, and reducing the overall delivery risk of the project.

During the debugging phase, because there is no need to wait for the physical prototype, the debugging engineer can purchase the hardware of the physical line according to the results of the virtual debugging of the software. This overall optimization of the traditional PLC debugging validation workflow – PLC debugging work in advance, the overall debugging work from the more unbalanced time task allocation switch to a more gentle increase and decrease, balance the workload of PLC engineers, ensure the final code quality and project delivery on time.

It is reported that in the actual debugging process of the project, Van der Lande found some programming errors of the PLC in advance through the virtual production line and corrected them in time. Compared with the traditional mode, the field commissioning time and cost of the new mode are reduced by 50%.

5SHX0845F0001

In the later operation and maintenance stage, customers can continue to benefit. To be specific, first, EMET software can be used for remote training of employees by customers. Compared with traditional video recording, many project details cannot be seen, and the software can rotate the entire production line 360 degrees, and zoom in and out from different perspectives. Second, the software can be used as line monitoring software in the operation and maintenance stage to help predictive maintenance; Third, based on the software, maintenance engineers can carry out remote operation and maintenance in some cases without physically visiting the site, saving time and cost.

5SHX0845F0001 In addition to reducing costs and increasing efficiency, EMET software has helped transform Van der Lande’s business model. For example, in the traditional pre-sale model, because users cannot see the physical production line, they may have many questions about the efficiency and functionality of the product. Today, with EMET software, Vanderland’s pre-sales engineers can quickly build project scenarios and display them for users in an all-round way, allowing end users to zoom in and out to see the details of the entire project from different angles, reducing the learning cost of end users, improving the order rate, and subverting the pre-sales business model.

Manager Chen of the R&D Department further said: “With the gradual accumulation of the number of models in the model library, we can eventually replace the verification effect of the physical airport inspection line through virtual means in the future, reducing the cost of materials, personnel and time as much as possible – if the physical line replacement verification is possible, it can save hundreds of thousands of material costs at a time.”