Towards Modular Modeling and Simulation of Production Control Systems

To enable the fast transition to new product variants a modern production plant has to employ flexible manufacturing systems which can be adopted to new requirements. Modeling and simulation of such adopted configurations is of great help to identify possible system malfunctions already during the manufacturing system design. Therefore the required number of tests that runs with the final manufacturing system can be significantly reduced. Besides the cost reduction, also a shorter system setup time is thus achieved. The assumed complete behavioral system model is however not realistic for complex large production systems. Instead, an approach for the modular modeling and simulation of production systems with defined boundaries is required. The underlying problems of modularity in this context are discussed and an approach towards modular modeling and simulation is presented.