Manufacturing companies today have to deal with a wide variety of complex challenges. These include batch sizes ranging from batch size 1 to larger series and, last but not least, dealing with delays and failures in the supply chains.
This is precisely the challenge that several Fraunhofer Institutes have taken on in the lead project “SWAP – Heterogeneous, workload-optimized robot teams and production architectures”, as part of which the “SWAP-IT” architecture was developed. The new technological concept comprehensively maps the requirements of tomorrow’s production. It enables a transformation from rigidly interlinked single-purpose production systems to flexible and dynamic networks of processing stations. The focus is on modular production systems that support both centrally and decentrally organized components. The modules can be adapted to the requirements of the production environment and can be further developed with little effort.
The Fraunhofer Groups “Production”, “Light & Surfaces” and “ICT” have pooled their interdisciplinary expertise to develop a joint architecture that can now be used in the automotive production, mechanical engineering, aircraft construction and electrical engineering sectors. The result underlines Fraunhofer’s technological leadership in modern production architectures.
Architecture and description language ready for launch as open source from the end of 2024
An important step towards a cyber-physical production system ready for implementation is the order-centric production environment, in which production orders are orchestrated using a specially developed description language, the Production Flow Description Language (“PFDL”), and delivered to the processing stations. This PDFL formalizes production orders and controls orders fully automatically. The production resources can be allocated dynamically at runtime with the architecture solution, which allows a rapid response to failures or short-term order peaks.
Both the architecture and PFDL of SWAP-IT will be available as open source in the future for expansion into a modular production architecture.
Industry workshop on September 26, 2024 at Universelle Werke and Fraunhofer IWU
At the industry workshop, the results achieved will be presented and evaluated in speaker tandems with industry representatives with regard to different application scenarios. The focus of the first half is the discussion of the status achieved in the context of industrial requirements. A highlight in the second part is the presentation of a complete process chain controlled according to the SWAP IT approach. The workshop will focus on the exchange with future users: The focus is on their needs.
Contact
Dr. Arvid Hellmich
Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU
UseCase responsible for “Large Components” and organizer of the industry workshop
Phone +49 351 4772-2610
arvid.hellmich@iwu.fraunhofer.de
Prof. Dr.-.Ing. Welf-Guntram Drossel
Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU
Project Manager
Phone +49 371 5397-1404
welf-guntram.drossel@iwu.fraunhofer.de
Prof. Dr. rer. nat Andreas Tünnermann
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF
Deputy Project Manager
Phone +49 3641 807-201
andreas.tuennermann@iof.fraunhofer.de
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Further links
👉 www.iwu.fraunhofer.de
Photo: Fraunhofer IWU Dresden
