<p style="text-align: justify">Smart Manufacturing advances have recently emerged, especially focused on the integration of Digital Thread (DTh) and Digital Twin (DT). The DTh can be understood as the information linkage between product lifecycle and the DT. The coupling of DTh-DT assembles and unifies the data collected, which can lead to decrease production times, improve efficiency and other benefits. Different areas of manufacturing have been explored with related implementations of DTh-DT entanglements such as additive manufacturing, aircraft production and weapons. The studies focus on how the DTh is integrated with a DT, how to enable different types of data to interact between processes and how to optimize processes.&nbsp; However, there is still a wide area of opportunity to further explore the integration of DTh-DT of collaborative manufacturing cells, layouts, humans in the loop, interaction with simulations and specifically, in the creation of a system to make an intelligent robotic cell.</p><p style="text-align: justify">This work provides a novel approach of a DTh-DT developed to function within a manufacturing robotic cell. In this work, a discrete event simulation (DES) was created with an open source programming software, representing the robotic cell and its elements, e.g., the robots, the workstations, buffers, etc. Sensors were added to the physical manufacturing cell in strategic parts of the process to obtain the necessary information for its DT. Once the data is collected, it is sent to a web app service in the cloud for display and accessibility and redundantly, stored locally in a database as backup. The input parameters for the simulation can be entered manually by the operator and can also be set automatically through a request to the web app service in the cloud or requested from the SQL database. The DTh of the cell is presented starting with the configuration of the server database, stored locally. This works in two different ways: Sending and Receiving data. First the sensors gather information from the physical process and the PLC of the robots are collecting and sending data to the database. Then the DES request the data from the database. Secondly, the simulation is executed and the results of it are received by the database for storage and future usage. The database works in parallel with an OPC-UA Server executed from a commercial software (Ignition 8.0).&nbsp; Also, the communication between the PLC and the OPC-UA Server is done separately from the database. This way of communicating is achieved directly from PLC to Server through the commercial software, using the local network. The Server receives data, provides organization, and applies filters, working as the link between the DT and the product Lifecycle. The data can be sent to the database or directly to the DES. This work presents a quick look to a DTh applied to a robotic cell, an approach to a DT and the use of different types of communications and platforms. The potential benefits of applied this type of configuration in an Industry 4.0 environment are described and critically reviewed.</p>

Digital Thread Approach for Smart-Collaborative Robotic Cell

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

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