Engineering Design of a Production Facility in Concordance with Industry 4.0

Abstract

In a previous project, a concept for a safety tool within the context of a JIS supply to a production system was developed. This master's thesis further develops the existing concept. First, a suitable development process was selected through a comprehensive literature review, and key focus areas were identified. Subsequently, a discrete-event simulation provides a rough analysis of the supply system's dynamics, with the critical unloading area additionally verified by a process simulation. The results suggest that considering system dynamics significantly affects the determined cycle time. Furthermore, the results indicate that both the conveying strategy and the PLC programming contribute considerably to the system’s performance. This established a fundamental basis for further system optimisation. The legal requirements for the safety tool were then examined. Various solution alternatives were evaluated, but ultimately, the developed concept was confirmed. Both the discrete-event and the process simulation contributed significantly to a better understanding of the direct delivery system. They will enable a more realistic determination of the cycle time, taking dynamic processes into account, in the further course of the project. Finally, the security concept was assessed against Industry 4.0 requirements, revealing a low-to-medium level of maturity. Opportunities were identified to increase the Industry 4.0 level of the industrial machine vision processing component, providing the basis for the future development of the conceptual safety application. This fulfils all the necessary prerequisites for further product development and a future automation concept.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Peter Obermüller (Supervisor)