Digital Twin and IIoT in Optimizing Manufacturing Process and Quality Management
3.5 Implementation key points
Fig . 3-6 : System architecture .
The overall system architecture based on the platform described above is illustrated in Fig . 3-6 .
• Equipment connectivity and data collection , integration to other systems , such as Process Specification Management System ( to obtain product process specification ) and Production Management System ( to obtain work order information ) are implemented with the IoT framework layer of the platform ( including IoT / Application Integration Gateways ), through GUI-based codeless configuration . The connectivity to equipment involves various common industrial connectivity protocols that include MODBUS , OPC UA / DA , and a few proprietary protocols ( e . g ., reading from database from third party data collection systems )
• Digital twin system representing all the relevant equipment and products are designed and configured . Within the GUI-based digital twin designer , digital twin classes ( see Fig . 3-7 ) ( each representing a specific type of equipment or product ) are created where equipment state variables and equipment process control parameters are defined as digital twin data fields , along with their metadata e . g ., data type , unit , validation limits etc . Then based on the number of instances of each equipment type , the digital twin classes are instantiated to represent the actual equipment instances . The data collected from the IoT framework is mapped to data fields in each of the digital twin instances using the GUI-based or configuration file-based batch import toolset provided by the platform .
- 74 - March 2021