Thought Leadership

Closed-loop validation brings the real and virtual together with Intelligent Performance Engineering

By Blake Snodgrass
Rahul Garg
Rahul Garg, Vice-president, Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment of Siemens Digital Industries Software

In an IMD article by Rahul Garg, Vice President of the Industrial Machinery & SMB Program at Siemens Digital Industries Software, he discusses how the industrial machinery industry requires modern, complex, and customized machines that meet customer expectations, driving OEM requirements. To improve the speed of innovation while relying on virtual simulation to reduce prototyping, it is essential that the simulations accurately portray the real-world machine operation in its given environment. Intelligent Performance Engineering (IPE) is a closed-loop validation process that provides the ability to verify simulation via real-time feedback from sensor-based machine data.

>Read the article.

Responding To Complexity: Intelligent Performance Engineering

Consumers need a packaged system of cohesive products and services tailored to their individual needs. Therefore, machine builders must offer a broad range of customization options for off-the-shelf machines unique to customer requests. Simultaneously, there is a rise in highly complex machines that integrate advanced machines, thus creating smart connected systems to meet demands for better throughput, performance, energy efficiency, quality, and safety.

These innovative systems join the mechanical, electrical, controls, and other proficiencies to assist OEMs in producing customizable and adaptable machines for their customers. Concurrently, machine builders are up against low-cost competitors globally. To prosper in this environment, manufacturers must embrace digitalization which drives innovation, differentiation, and cost competitiveness. Intelligent Performance Engineering (IPE) is the answer, assisting OEMs in discovering better designs faster while boosting productivity.

Using IPE helps to decipher the disparities necessary for next-generation machines virtually, efficiently achieving an optimal balance of cost and performance while achieving maximum dependability. IPE provides crucial differentiators for machine builders: 

  • Multi-physics simulation and testing – balances multi-attribute engineering, delivering a wide range of physics and disciplines to optimize industrial machinery complexities.
  • Integrated design and simulation – allow designers and engineers to use the same model in one system, driving innovative productivity via simulation. 
  • Closed-loop validation – confirms simulations to capture and test relationship requirements, functional layout, logical implementation, and physical implementation.

Test and Simulation

“Closed-loop validation allows machine builders to move seamlessly through design, commissioning, and machine operation in the field and back again. This methodology is built around the machine’s digital twin, helping design, simulation, and testing understand and predict the performance of the physical machine under various conditions before, during, and after committing to a physical prototype,” says Rahul Garg.

The digital twin’s foundation is integrated design and simulation, capturing simulation and validation results in a central repository. In return, teams can evaluate the capability and limitation of product variations because of the integration between designers, analysts, and live data, focusing on improving crucial design metrics. Additionally, a digital thread helps to automate information sharing between engineering teams, analyst production, test teams, and service engineers. Subsequently, by having a digital twin supported by digital threads, machine builders can increase their design flexibility, boost productivity, and improve innovative processes – building the next generation of smart industrial machines.

Learn more in Rahul’s article.

Xcelerator, the comprehensive and integrated portfolio of software and services from Siemens Digital Industries Software, helps companies of all sizes create and leverage a comprehensive digital twin that provides organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation.

For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software products and services, visit siemens.com/software or follow us on LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Instagram. Siemens Digital Industries Software – where today meets tomorrow.

Related links:
Smart Manufacturing podcast 01 – Uncovering Smart Manufacturing
Smart Manufacturing podcast 02 – The Convergence of IT and OT in Digitalized Manufacturing

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/thought-leadership/2022/08/17/closed-loop-validation-brings-the-real-and-virtual-together-with-intelligent-performance-engineering/