MOTORS, DRIVES & CONTROLS
Designing AMRs for retrofit applications delivers multiple benefits
MODULARITY FEEDS CASE FOR RETROFIT To enable greater retrofit possibilities, designing AMRs and other machine equipment for modularity from the start is crucial, Bartissol says. “We have all these initiatives
to design for cost, for service, for simulation driven design, but this is not enought. We should be designing for retrofit and that should be the primary goal for design right now,” he explains. “Engineers need to take the view: what will this piece of equipment become over the next 10, 20, or 50 years? This is important on two counts, for the environment and sustainability but also for profitability.” A modular product range demands
advanced design software capabilities, such as modelling and simulation. “You need to have a software or PLM simulation platform that sustains modularity,” Bartissol adds. “With this,
you can carry out configuration, define modules, interfaces and so on. This is what we are striving for. With these capabilities, you can choose your reason for retrofitting: to consume less energy, to save water, to reduce noise, to be more agile, or to be IoT capable, for instance.”
AUTOMATION IS THE ANSWER “Due to the current skills and worker shortages across production industries, we will see more and more automation,” Bartissol predicts. “We used to have very long runs in production lines but now these have shortened, meaning we need to work in a more agile mode to rapidly adapt to changes. We now see a new domain emerging called intralogistics, which is the merging of robots, AMRs, forklifts, conveyors and automated storage capabilities, among other things. All these elements are connected by a
DIGITAL TWIN SIMULATIONS
As Bartissol says, simulation-driven design is closely interlinked with digital twins, where engineers can model and simulate various scenarios and designs of machines in order to capture and feed data into the AI algorithms on the 3DEXPERIECE platform. “Engineers can adapt the digital twin of a machine to optimise different simulations and analyse the data, such as the event of a machine crash or failure,” he explains. “Through this, you can see the cause and understand how to prevent this. Also, by observing the behaviour of the equipment over time, you will be able to predict the next failure. Simulation of models helps you to not only understand the past, but also navigate into the future and improve overall equipment efficiency. “Now, some of our customers are asking us to create specific twins of each machine: an engineering twin, a manufacturing twin, and in the future a field twin. This allows the opportunity to switch to an equipment- as-a-service business model. MODSIM AI will serve not only during new product development, but also when the equipment is in operation and requires maintenance.”
global controller PRC or MES to create wholly automated warehouse systems.” Looking to the near future, Bartissol
foresees the combination of AMRs and AI to be adopted effectively in logistics centres and production lines, with humans playing their part at the beginning and end of the product development and manufacturing process, but not in the middle. “Most of this will be robots working
together with human beings in a safe and optimised system,” he says. “The actors are transforming themselves, and we see more and more integration capabilities and layers all in one place. The ones who are investing now and investing heavily are the ones who will likely win in the future.”
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