As the business world looks to reboot the economy post Covid19, connected systems, increasingly autonomous, take center stage.
How to define, build, simulate and optimize the experience you want to offer your customers?
This is the question we adressed during a session last tuesday at Hannover Messe 2021 Virtual Event.
I shared this session with @PB, VP Industrial Equipement
a big thanks for Industry and CATIA experts who contributed on illustrations
@FB @JB @AA @DM @VL
Connected systems are now part of our world, whether you’re at home, in your car, at the office or in a manufacturing plant. They transform the way we learn, the way we buy, the way we use, the way we produce things. So designing a new connected system cannot be like designing a product. It is about thinking a new experience.
But how can we design & simulate connected system so that they get a positive impact on performance. That’s what we want to demonstrate here.
Let's have a look on example of connected system ?
Our vehicles are now smart & connected; they are more & more autonomous. Your car but also the road infrastructure, cities will connect to transportation system whether they transport goods or people. Flying taxis are coming.
For these future transportation systems, connectivity means safety, to make sure data flowing from infrastructure to vehicle back & forth can take proactive action.
The same applies to a vehicle in an industrial environment. A truck in a mine, an autonomous mobile robot or cobot in a plant.... All are smart system exchanging terabytes of data per day.
There are a common denominator between all those system, they are a mixed of mechanical components, electrical, fluidic and more and more software. Simulating the behavior of this Soft-Mecha-Tronics is key.
Hereunder a list of Challenges & Business Drivers we observed.
Transformation is key for companies who want to be competitive in the design and simulation of connected system.
Let’s be pragmatic and look at 5 key steps to reach a new level of maturity. Those steps are :
- A new approach to design an connected system experience
- The Architecture of this system
- The simulation of system behavior
- The optimization of the system in its environment thru connectivity
- The virtual simulation of the system in a plant
Let’s start, From Product Design to Experience thinking.
Here is an example of the company MIELE, world-class leader when it comes to design a new experience for Home appliances. We worked with their design studio to re-imagine an experience.
An experience is about living, interacting with human, product & service. This is the challenge we faced when we met with MIELE.
They said “it’ nonsense to design a product without the user experience “. This was the perfect playground to introduce our experience thinking approach based on 3DEXPERIENCE platform to optimize workflow and design practices.
We worked with mixed team of designer and system engineers to design and prototype in 3D a user scenario. It open new possibilities for the design department in collaboration with all disciplines
Following Experience Thinking, Architecture is key to specify, model & validate the system in the very early stage of development.
You see in the video below a rather complex bottling line including rinsing, filling, capping, labeling and end of line packing. Every machine and conveyor is connected and line overall must be synchronized.
So we start system definition with customers and compliance requirements. You can describe requirements directly in the platform or simply import word or excel formats.
Then we leverage a Model Based System Engineering from requirements to solution.
One very important step is to list all stakeholders, even the ones that are immediately coming to mind.
Then we map the system itself and start to simulate its step by step logic.
Finally we architect the electrical and control network, with specified input and outputs. So that if later an electromechanical component has to be changed, all disciplines understand the impacts and what needs to be done
This last video greatly highlighted the importance of System architecture to validate the key system function & logic in the early phase of development.
Logical Architecture can be simulated to validate the virtual twin early enough so that we can validate the specifications and test the behavior of the overall system.
You can see the example we’ve made on an elevator, we have the complete Virtual twin including the control logic, and also the multi physics behavior.
With such a model, mechanical, electrical, Electronics engineering can sit down and collaborate to make the right tradeoff for the final product.
Actually, we also apply the same technique of system architecture modeling to this 5G small cell.
You see now the virtual twin of the plant where we are going to implement the 5G Network.
The 5G Small cell system architecture is defined : functional architecture , logical architecture fully developed on our 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
The full traceability of the system is managed from requirements to implementation.
The physics can also simulated in 3D. At the cell level, but also in the plant where we can identify the impact of different small cell positioning in the plant.
This is where we see again the power of the virtual twin approach, the combination of Architecture and 3D Simulation data to design our system right the first time. This is game changer.
The last video is about virtual commissioning: the validation of the equipment or complete line software application.
In this case here, we want to verify the correct execution of the application controlling the entire line, meaning giving order to the conveyor and to the robot.
We map the simulation inputs and outputs of all pieces of equipment.
We describe the system using block diagrams and/or ladder.
And then we validate the actual program on a virtual line, verifying that connected system accomplishes the requested mission before the line is installed at customer site or even before any part if fabricated.
We are able to accelerate or decelerate the whole system, testing at various speeds.
This control application virtual commissioning is of utmost importance, as more than 50% of issues occurring during installation and fine tuning, under your customer’s eyes, are related to the line controlling
We talked a lot about virtual twins , but are they several twin per steps of the process on just one that is evolving ?
Actually these are various facets of the same twin structure: a marketing twin, a sales twin, a detailed design twin, an installation and a service twin.
The service or field twin being probably the one where the value of connected systems really reveals itself . Indeed, with a system thinking you will enable large cost savings during installation, quality claims and later on full retrofit executions.
This concludes our 2021 Hanover Messe Connected Systems session.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Do not hesitate to reach us for any questions
