A software framework for virtual testing of a production control system.

Production planning poses major challenges due to high product diversity, high fluctuations in demand and strong dynamic fluctuations in delivery quantities and times. This makes automation of production planning increasingly necessary to enable optimized sequence planning based on current production data. Production control systems (PRS) offer the possibility of automatic corrective actions in the event of deviations from the specified target dates. Production, PRS and data acquisition are considered as a single control loop and are the subject of various development and research topics. However, automatic interventions in planning and control can lead to serious disruptions if there are errors in the software of the PRS. Therefore, testing and validation of PRS is a crucial factor in development, but is hardly possible in real production environments due to the availability of physical manufacturing facilities and the associated risks. Therefore, in the scope of the paper, a concept for a software framework is proposed to provide a test environment for a PRS. A virtual production environment, which can be combined with the PRS and parameterized in form of a discrete-event simulation, offers the possibility to test the PRS. It is also possible to couple the simulation with a reference calculation to show the behavior of the production environment. The entire framework is designed to enable the identification of critical machines and times as well as, in further steps, the detection of software errors in the PRS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]