Who sets the plant control in the first place?
In our last post we talked about how simulation can help us with plant control. Simulation itself is a tool for the development of such controls, but it is not a development environment in the true sense or does not specify controls. At the end of the day, it is again the human being in front of the computer who basically defines how the processes in the system are.
And of course, the question here is what kind of control system and at what level of detail one is working with. You certainly won’t talk about optimisation controls in the concept phase in order to operate a warehouse; it’s about fundamental issues as such.
But in the course of the project, the control system and thus, of course, the virtual model will become more and more detailed and refined. The added value of the simulation model is that the control system that works in the simulation models is used as a blueprint to transfer it to the real systems.
Unfortunately, there is not yet an interface to export the PLC code from the model because many things are not included due to the abstraction. But the blueprint is an important guideline for the software developers, who then have to develop and work out such control systems.
And of course we have the possibility in this model to simply play through control alternatives without any risk. It doesn’t hurt to try out completely different strategies, which would be a huge effort to implement in the real system. In principle, you would have to develop and implement two different warehouse management systems to try this out. And these are certainly important advantages that such a digital model delivers.
The next master question is: Where does the data for such a simulation model actually come from? More on this in our next article.
Read more about virtual commissioning: www.simplan.de/en/services/virtual-commissioning/.
Tools for Virtual Commissioning:
Emulate3D: emulate3d.de/emulate3d-virtuelle-inbetriebnahme/
Plant Simulation: plant-simulation.de/einsatzbereiche/virtuelle-inbetriebnahme/