![\"Bill](\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2019\/11\/bill-davis.jpg\")
Again, I interview one of our resident engineering experts, Bill Davis, who is the\u00a0Director of Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Solutions\u00a0at\u00a0Siemens Digital Industries Software<\/em>. Bill\u2019s expertise in this industry expands over 30 years, with 20 years as an engineer. Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> Welcome to Siemens Digital Industry Software podcast series on\nAdvanced Machine Engineering, brought to you by the Siemens Thought Leadership\nteam. Innovations with industrial machinery in manufacturing are seeing\ngroundbreaking technological advancements. Today, in our third podcast of the\nseries, we will learn the advantages that advanced machine engineering brings\nto the industrial machinery manufacturers, and more specifically, we will focus\nthe discussion today around virtual machine simulation and commissioning and\nhow machine manufacturers are implementing this approach to improve the quality\nand reduce delivery time for highly complex machines. I want to welcome again\nour expert in the series, Bill Davis, who’s the Director of Industrial\nMachinery and Heavy Equipment Solutions at Siemens. Bill has over 30 years of\nexperience in engineering and operations management, and has spent the last 20\nyears, focused on the industrial machinery industry. So, welcome Bill!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> So, I’ve got a few questions on the topic. In our last two\npodcasts, we talked about the evolution of technology within the machinery\nindustry, and key trends that continue to shape the industry today. We also\nintroduced the Advanced Machine Engineering solution at a high level, where you\ndiscussed three key differentiators – multi-disciplinary design, virtual\nmachine simulation and commissioning, multi-disciplinary Bill of Material (BOM)\nmanagement and configuration management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our last\nsession we took a deep dive into multi-disciplinary design. In this session,\nthough, I’d like to kind of twist the conversation and shift over to virtual\nmachine simulation and commissioning. What is virtual machine simulation and\ncommissioning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> Thank you, Bill, and thanks to everyone for attending this\nseries. The virtual machine simulation and commissioning is what we talk about,\nbroadly speaking, as it relates to how does the machine that we prove out to a\ncustomer physically, on the factory floor, operate in the virtual world? No one\nis going to buy a machine sight unseen; and they’re not going to buy your claim\nthat you virtually simulated this because you ran some software code. They\nstill want to see that machine work before they let you ship it to their plant.\nHowever, because many software integrations and safety factors are necessary to\nrun a machine, you don’t want to do it for the first time with people around.\nYou want to be able to do it in the virtual world so that when you get to the\npoint of building or turning that machine on, and performing the real\ncommissioning, there\u2019s less pressure for you and your customers. So, that’s\nwhat we’re talking about when it comes to virtual machine simulation and\ncommissioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> Let’s try and narrow it down for our listeners a little bit.\nWhat are some of the specific challenges that machine builders are facing in\nwhere this approach could benefit them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> I will divide up our industry a little bit and talk about\ndifferent types of machines and how their commissioning might vary depending on\ntheir virtual commissioning needs. So, if you build your own equipment, you\nwould also buy third-party equipment, and build the intermediate pieces \u2013 conveyors,\nsensors, etc. \u2013 that integrate as well. Therefore, what we call line builders,\neven though that wasn’t our major focus of our business, needs to prove that\nevery one of those pieces will work in the way that we designed it and orchestrate\nthat behavior so that it operates seamlessly. Sometimes this interface is\nchallenging in bringing those disparate systems and code together \u2013 this is one\npiece of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A second\narea of machine development where virtual commissioning is very important is in\nrobotic cells. You may have heard in the press that robots, cobots and all\nrobotic integration where there is a multi-axis capability of moving many\ndirections, has code that’s embedded into the robot to prevent it from not operating\nefficiently. So, you have more of a transactional relationship, and you must\nget into that code with those robots to be able to extract that behavior. So, when\nthere is a couple of robotic cells and traditional picking places this is not a\nbig deal; however, when you’re integrating them for machining or continuous\ndata that must flow back and forth between the PLC code and the robot, it is\nmore complex. This is a crucial situation when you’re driving machines to be\nmore and more efficient and operating near the edges of their capability and\nperformance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another\ntrend is if you’ve ever bought something from Amazon, did you ever wonder how\nthey got it to you in less than an hour? Whole factories, including lights-out\nfactories, have production systems, and this is an area that’s growing quickly,\ncalled “logistics automation<\/em>“.\nSo, not only do you have the capabilities around behaviors of a machine that’s\nsupposed to pick and wrap, but now you have autonomous capabilities around\nwhere you have a robot that must seek out a certain SKU, based on a warehouse\nlocation. The level of automation and the need to do a virtual commissioning is\namped up significantly because now you’ve got way to have more pieces in play\nat the same time. You’ve got multiple robots roving through these factories,\nand obviously they can’t collide. Whereas, in a robotic cell, it’s usually a\nsingle robot or an orchestration of a couple of different robots in logistics\nautomation, and it’s a bit of a free-for-all, where each one of these robots\nhas its own goal and it doesn’t necessarily matter if there’s another robot in\ntheir way. Therefore, is necessary to orchestrate these interfaces in a unique\nway. So, that’s an example of a few of the different types of machinery\ncompanies and machinery integrators where virtual commissioning is becoming an\nimportant part of their manufacturing or their design execution and\nmanufacturing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill Butcher:<\/em><\/strong> So, even though we narrowed the scope a little bit, the challenges you just talked about are vast. Help me understand how Advanced Machine Engineering, and more specifically, virtual machine simulation, can help overcome these challenges. What exactly is the simulation approach or approaches that are being leveraged to address these challenges?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> We started talking about the different machinery types of\ncompanies, but there’s various disciplines within the simulation world that we\nhave and are included in Advanced Machine Engineering. Siemens has an entire\ndigital industry software solution suite that involves simulation. One of the\nfirst is what’s called a 1D Simulation, or more appropriately, system modeling.\nOne of the capabilities is before you decide how something is to be powered,\nyou model it in various manners for prime optimization. Now, it’s a symbology,\nif you will, of behaviors; it’s not really a design in a more traditional\nmechanical CAD mock-up kind of way of doing simulation. It\u2019s an understanding\nof how the systems are powered and what must be done in terms of each one of\nthe types of behaviors. They overlay on top of the diverse domains, whether\nit’s a pneumatics or electrical, to increase the fidelity because it’s very\nsimple in terms of it not requiring the building of any CAD models. You’re\nworking with symbols and connecting them together for goal-seeking quickly,\nfailing fast and figuring out how things are supposed to work. Realistically,\nit’s a new concept for machinery companies, but more common in the heavy\nequipment space up until now, as it’s starting to take root in machinery\ncompanies, and I’m glad because it\u2019s the best way to get to that optimal,\nstreamline design \u2013 the mechanical 3D portion of it, which is what we’ll talk\nabout next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a more\ntraditional 3D simulation world, I think most people are familiar with how they\ncan take the CAD model and apply loads and constraints to them and get behavior\nout of the model, where the high stress is. A long time ago, the series on\nAmerican Chopper, with the older guy who founded the company that builds custom\nmotorcycles, has his first exposure to 3D simulation and he said, “Okay,\nso let me get this right: red is bad and blue is good. Okay, I got it.” So,\nin a humorous, simplistic way, 3D simulation can be explained. However, I think\nwhat’s more common today is that it’s not just about static load cases and\nforces being applied to models \u2013 we need to think about different\nmulti-disciplinary or multi-domain kinds of simulation in the 3D space. Also,\nin addition to structural, we have fluid and behavior in a vacuum, especially\nfor packaging machinery, where we use much vacuum to pick a product and place\nit. So, the behavior from a fluid dynamics perspective is important, including\nthermal and vibration and acoustics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a customer who built a machine for our simulation group, where they use heated rollers to form this package on separate films. So, it became critical for them to understand the behavior of the heated rollers and where it was effective along the entire length of that roller. And if there were other fluid portions of that thermal, the air that goes into the system shows how it was impacting the thermal conductivity between the rollers and the film. And then, because it’s a rotating equipment, incorporating things like vibration and acoustics into that, I mean, that gets to be pretty complex. But, what we’ve seen is that as the machines are getting faster, and people are expecting greater production capacities, these other disciplines or domains of 3D simulation are becoming more important to integrate into the mechanical design in the Advanced Machine Engineering design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That upfront\nsimulation is good, but you also must be able to test it out to virtually\ncommission it and physical testing. Using the thermal example again \u2013 the\nvarying temperature doesn’t exceed 30 degrees Celsius. Even though your model\nsaid, “Yes, it will do that”, you still must have the testing\ncapability to be able to prove the machine behaves the way that you designed\nit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we\ntalked about virtual commissioning as a set of capabilities in terms of\nsimulation \u2013 simulating the machine performance in the virtual world is necessary\nbecause we’re having more and more behavior of that machine that’s being driven\nby software. Therefore, to express that and know that it’s going to behave the\nway that you want it to, you must be able to test that code on a virtual twin,\nand it’s more than just behavior; however, there\u2019s the physical safety aspect\nof it. If the machine collides in the virtual world, it’s a lot safer and less\ncostly than in the real machine. Of course, it costs more money and it extends\nout your lead time, but having that virtual commissioning capability and being\nable to drive not just the behavior of the motors \u2013 turn on the motor, turn off\nthe motor, light this lamp, turn this lamp off, etc. \u2013 but also integrating\nthat into the kinematics and working it backward up into the 3D simulation. This\nis powerful because we don’t always have a good handle on what the forces are\nfor the 3D simulation. In other words, we tend to express it as best we know,\nbut when the mechanism moves twice as fast as we thought it would, the kinetic\nenergy is a factor of the square of the velocity \u2013 an actual impact load can be\ngreater than we anticipated. If you don’t have a way of replicating the\nkinematics in your virtual commissioning software, you’re missing out on\npotential hazards that you could see downstream. So, those are some of the\nareas of simulation that we focus on when we talk about the whole simulation\nsuite of products and machine engineering, but especially on the virtual\ncommissioning side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> Can you continue that thought further by diving a deeper into\nwhat some of the benefits are for those manufacturers that go all the way and\nincorporate this virtual machine simulation commissioning approach and\nintegrate it into their manufacturing process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> Yes, sure, Bill. So, we talked about a few different\ncapabilities and I think it’s important to just touch on these from an\noperations side. Having experience on the manufacturing operations side of\nautomation companies gave me a unique perspective. I was kind of what I would\ncall a victim of engineering. So, where we started to press for more virtual\ncommissioning and simulation in that process, it gave us benefits in operations\nwere more cost-effective. Therefore, we could deliver in a more appropriate\ntimeframe. Every day that I’m late in delivering a machine to a customer means\nX number of thousands of dollars that come off the bottom line for that machine\nsale. So, it’s important for the operations and manufacturing side of the\nbusiness to deliver that machine as quickly as possible within the construct of\nthe contract. So, all these factors that we’re were discussing are about risk\nmitigation and schedule compression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having an\nintegrated simulation supports parallel engineering development. It avoids me\nhaving to have a programmer sitting on the machine floor while the machine is mechanically\nand electrically complete, for them to do their programming and code\nvalidation. Therefore, it shortens up the overall manufacturing delivery\nschedule. We have significant experience from a Siemens perspective because we\nbuild our own hardware, we manufacture our own products, we can actually test\nthose manufacturing processes out and we can build a very tight integration\nbetween our software code development and the hardware itself, so we’ve been\nable to test out this and we’re leaders in this whole virtual commissioning\nsimulation for a number of years. The products of Siemens are just amazing in\nterms of the fidelity and how complete the capability of testing is around both\nthe PLC code and the HMI integration. I haven’t seen anything in the market\nthat’s close to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> Are there any other examples of companies that have taken this\napproach and implemented it? And if so, what kind of benefits they’ve received?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nDavis:<\/em><\/strong> Tronrud is an example. They have been able to reduce their\ncommissioning time up to 70 percent, while compressing their engineering time\nby 25 percent. These numbers are a significant benefit to their bottom line.\nJust an example from my past is having the ability to build about twenty\nmachines at one time on the manufacturing floor, thus shortening commissioning time\nby one week that translated into about 10 or 15 percent increase in productive\ncapacity on the machine floor. That’s huge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> That gives a competitive advantage, I can see that, yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bill\nButcher:<\/em><\/strong> Well, thank you again, Bill, for the conversation today and\ntaking us even further into the Advanced Machine Engineering Solution and\nlooking at the advantages it provides machine manufacturers when they leverage\na virtual machine simulation and commissioning approach. We look forward to the\nnext and final podcasts in the series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Listen\nto podcast01<\/a>, podcast02<\/a>, podcast03<\/a> and podcast04<\/a> from this series via our Thought Leadership blogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, you can access\nthe entire podcast series via Apple<\/a>, Stitcher<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, Castbox<\/a>, TuneIn<\/a> or Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To improve the speed\nand efficiency of your machine design process, watch our Advanced Machine Engineering \u2013 Start your digital transformation\njourney today<\/em><\/a> webinar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About our expert:<\/strong> This blog is an\nexcerpt from the advanced machine engineering podcast transcript, displaying\nthe second in a series of four podcasts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Industrial machinery in manufacturing is witnessing highly significant innovations. It is challenging to design, validate and manage modern-day manufacturing and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15782,"featured_media":3447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,4,44],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-industrial-machinery","tag-simulation","tag-virtual-commissioning"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2020\/03\/ame-virtual-commissioning-and-simulation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15782"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3446\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=3446"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Below, is the transcribed excerpt from the\u00a0third podcast in this series<\/a>:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nBill Davis<\/strong><\/em> is the\nacting Industrial Machinery and Heavy Equipment Industry leader for Siemens\nDigital Industries Software. His experience and insights have been acquired\nfrom a career spanning 30 years in engineering and operations management with\nmachinery and heavy equipment companies. Bill holds a master\u2019s degree in\nBusiness Administration from Marquette University, with a concentration in Operations\nManagement and Strategic <\/em>Marketing<\/em><\/a>,\nas well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from\nMilwaukee <\/em>School<\/em><\/a> of\nEngineering.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n