Holistic digital twin for intralogistics

Under the mot­to “Intel­li­gent intral­o­gis­tics — expe­ri­ence the flow”, Siemens will present at this year’s Logi­mat in Hall 3, Booth D11, how a holis­tic dig­i­tal twin is devel­oped with the Dig­i­tal Enter­prise Port­fo­lio. Sim­u­la­tion based on a dig­i­tal twin makes it pos­si­ble to design appli­ca­tions and process­es in intral­o­gis­tics in a high­ly effi­cient, flex­i­ble and intel­li­gent way. Against the back­ground that mar­kets and require­ments have changed in the last two years and the intral­o­gis­tics indus­try has to cope with a strong­ly grow­ing e‑commerce, this con­tributes to sus­tain­able com­pet­i­tive­ness. Here, increas­ing stock turnover rates with short­er stor­age peri­ods, small order quan­ti­ties with high deliv­ery speeds, ris­ing return rates and the short-term increase in deliv­ery quan­ti­ties require flex­i­ble and scal­able intral­o­gis­tics process­es. The new require­ments can be met with the help of dig­i­ti­za­tion and automation.

At Logi­mat, the com­pa­ny will use a Dynam­ic Gap­per appli­ca­tion to demon­strate how a dig­i­tal twin helps to meet the new intral­o­gis­tics require­ments. In this typ­i­cal intral­o­gis­tics appli­ca­tion, pack­ages of dif­fer­ent sizes and dis­tances from one anoth­er are brought togeth­er by two con­verg­ing con­vey­or belts onto a com­mon con­vey­or belt, sep­a­rat­ed in a defined man­ner and the dis­tances between the pack­ages reg­u­lat­ed. The tech­nol­o­gy group shows both the real appli­ca­tion and its simulation.

The sim­u­la­tion takes place before the actu­al design is start­ed. This allows the appli­ca­tion to be vir­tu­al­ly opti­mized and val­i­dat­ed, reduc­ing devel­op­ment and engi­neer­ing time for machine builders by up to 35 per­cent. Oper­a­tors of logis­tics cen­ters also ben­e­fit from the dig­i­tal twin, because with its help com­mis­sion­ing times can also be reduced by up to 40 per­cent. The entire hard­ware as well as the con­trol sys­tem with all func­tions includ­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, safe­ty and web serv­er can be sim­u­lat­ed with­in the scope of a vir­tu­al com­mis­sion­ing. In the mean­time, the real appli­ca­tion can be built and wired and is ready for the actu­al com­mis­sion­ing. This then main­ly con­sists of load­ing the pro­gram into the CPU and trans­fer­ring the para­me­ters to the drives.

The real appli­ca­tion can also be fur­ther opti­mized dur­ing oper­a­tion. By con­nect­ing to a cloud or edge plat­form, valu­able process data can be col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed dur­ing oper­a­tion. This enables oper­a­tors of intral­o­gis­tics cen­ters to respond quick­ly to changes such as increased deliv­ery vol­umes and cre­ate sus­tain­able, flex­i­ble and scal­able processes.

The Group sup­ports machine man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors of logis­tics cen­ters on the path to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. The Dig­i­tal Enter­prise Port­fo­lio offers an inte­grat­ed prod­uct range of soft­ware-based sys­tems and automa­tion tech­nolo­gies at the heart of which is the dig­i­tal twin. By using the dig­i­tal twin of mate­r­i­al han­dling equip­ment, ware­house oper­a­tions and per­for­mance, the entire val­ue chain is sim­u­lat­ed and val­i­dat­ed and can thus be designed opti­mal­ly and effi­cient­ly. This con­sis­tent­ly increas­es the effi­cien­cy of machine and plant con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion, min­i­mizes error rates and down­times, and short­ens devel­op­ment times. Through the seam­less inter­ac­tion of the real and dig­i­tal worlds, the tech­nol­o­gy group helps to increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty of plants and thus sus­tain­ably reduce the costs and ener­gy con­sump­tion of logis­tics centers.