ESSC & DUPLEX 2019

State of the art metal processing lines need to suit to customer requirements, which are driven by short commissioning periods, fast start-up curves, large material flow rates and high demands in product quality. Projects in the past have shown that already minor problems encountered in engineering phase have big impact to meet these requirements. To solve engineering problems during commissioning takes lots of time and goes along with enormous additional costs for customers and sellers. Lessons learned of finished projects give important information about customer needs like to learn the efficient operation of the new production line in a short time to start immediate production after commissioning. 3D ViSE is a tool which was developed to help identifying software engineering faults in a first approach. The complete production line is integrated in an external 3D environment and acts as virtual Level 0. In an early state of software engineering it is possible to test the engineered automation program and sequences against the digital twin. Logic faults can be identified immediately. A second approach of 3D ViSE includes an integration of virtual control elements to allow operating the whole virtual production line. This gives a big amount of application areas. To test and optimize the whole automation program before commission, to train operator personnel on the digital twin any time, and to shorten amount of commissioning days, are just a few use cases of 3D ViSE.