Wipro PARI’s customer base mostly consists of OEMs such as Daimler, Mahindra, Ford, FCA, TATA etc. The Virtual commissioning process (VC) helped reduce their manual engineering efforts.
The VC process uses simulation technology to create a plant’s digital twin for testing changes before physically implementing them. It also lets manufacturers perform end-to-end virtual verification, mechanical and control systems design and risk and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). This solution indirectly enables engineers to avoid cost-intensive rework.
Process Simulate, a part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, was used by Wipro PARI when asked to perform VC for a machining line of an OEM.
Prolonged manufacturing process:
Process Simulate is a digital manufacturing solution for process verification in a 3D environment. “By using Process Simulate to create a digital twin, we can validate tomorrow’s machine,” states Latheesh C. Krishnan, corporate head of design validation and virtual commissioning at Wipro PARI.
An initial challenge in the project was handling the considerable size of the OEM’s manufacturing process. The machining line consisted of four robots and ten machining centres: machines for washing, deburring, leak testing and vision checking and over 100 conveyors, slides, positioners, lifters and part variants. Additionally, the line complexity was compounded by its ability to run 17 variants in a mixed-batch mode.
To approach this scale of a VC project, the company divided the assembly line into four zones, each running on a different mode in Process Simulate and Siemens’ SIMIT software. Wipro PARI used hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) configuration for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and human-machine interfaces (HMIs) to test several types of safety interlocks. Further, they performed offline programming (OLP) integration for robots and customised extensible markup language (XML) to enhance the functionality to match their needs from the OLP. Then they simulated radio-frequency identification (RFID), vision system interfaces, scanners and safety logic written in safe central processing units (CPUs).
VC reduced rework and rework and delivery time
Incorporating VC with HiL, Wipro PARI was able to minimise rework by 40 to 50 per cent and reduce delivery time by 5 to 10 per cent.
“Virtual commissioning enables us to validate and optimise equipment performance for all complex use cases and failure modes early in the project lifecycle,” claims Dr Ranjit Date, chief executive officer (CEO) of Wipro PARI.
Parallelly, Wipro PARI completed another VC project of a production volume up on a brown field engine assembly line in three months from design to shop floor commissioning. They were also able to reduce on-site commissioning time by 70 per cent.