3 clever ways to optimize your production with Digital Twins

Digital Twin technology can undoubtedly help manufacturers navigate current industry challenges like time-to-market, quality or new sustainability regulations. Its superpower? Providing flexibility. Digital Twins can simulate any scenario imaginable before it actually happens, so you can make informed decision and prepare yourself and your production.

Any. Scenario. Imaginable! That means application areas are endless, which is great on the one hand, but can be a little overwhelming on the other.

In this newsletter we give orientation and spark inspiration by letting you peek behind the curtains of our own Electronics Factory in Erlangen. We share three examples of how we use Digital Twins to optimize material flows, increase simulation accuracy and reduce energy consumption significantly.

1. Orchestrate material circulation

Space is limited in a production hall, which means that unnecessary material containers can clutter important areas and become obstacles for employees or automated guided vehicles (AGVs). In the worst case, this can even lead to production downtime. Here, simulation is proving its worth:

At the Electronics Factory Erlangen, we can retrieve digital models, simulate and test – and feed them back into the PLM system afterwards. And this is exactly what we did to optimize the material supply of our fully automated assembly. We established and executed a so-called “software-in-the-loop” approach between the simulation and the optimization software. As a result we were able to identify the optimal number of material containers in the process and reduced material circulation by 40%.

2. Optimize the accuracy of AGV routes

With over 30 AGVs at our Erlangen plant, it’s crucial to meticulously plan their routes on the shopfloor. They deliver material just-in-time to and from the production line, so it pays off to take a closer look at their daily routes.

Digital Twins are not only a great companion while planning and designing production processes and logistics, but also while production is running. Thanks to the data transparency created from bringing IT and OT teams and technologies together, we’re able to feed real production data into the previously set up simulations. The data is being processed and then fed back to the production system. The result is a continuous loop of optimization, which leads to a 10% higher accuracy of AGV route simulation.

3. Reduce energy consumption

The first, and arguably the most important, step to tackle sustainability goals, especially in energy consumption, is creating transparency. To identify potential for improvement, we need to analyze the status quo, which is always based on data.

As an electronics manufacturer, we run very energy-intense processes and therefore have set high sustainability standards. Using our plant simulation software, we simulated energy consumption and optimized the production lines accordingly, so that they’re now producing the same output and quality in a more energy efficient way. Digital Twin technology also enabled us to combine data coming from the production and building. That was the basis to rework the control of the hall ventilation and today the ventilation system runs on 70% less energy than before.

“Our production systems need to be very flexible to ensure that they can be operated efficiently. Lean methods in combination with the Digital Twin and simulations help us achieve optimal timing and optimal system operation.” - Lars Schreiber, Simulation & Digital Twin Expert at Siemens

Our three use cases make it clear that different Digital Twins can serve various purposes within a production environment. What they all have in common is that they can test endless scenarios in the digital world to answer questions that help to make confident decisions in the real world!

Want to learn more about this story?

• Take a deep dive on how Digital Twins help to get the best out of production at the Erlangen plant
• Get more insights on our factory’s entire journey to become a lean, green Digital Enterprise.
• Read about how our colleagues leverage AI to improve production quality, time-to-market, and resource efficiency at the Electronics Factory Erlangen.

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