Sustainability, digitalization and business models: New approaches in production.

Automation is already well advanced in many industries. Today, highly automated production cells reliably cover complex production steps - and this with increasing variance in requirements. However, the challenge here is to take sustainability aspects into account: Until now, it has been common practice to dismantle or convert production cells after use or when requirements change, whereby the reuse of individual operating equipment is only possible to a limited extent. As a result, many components have to be scrapped, which leads to an increased product carbon footprint (PCF).

The research objective: Rethinking sustainability at the level of operating resources!

As part of the AutoPilot research project, models for the sustainable and recyclable use of operating resources and production cells are to be researched. In doing so, the existing practices of cooperation between suppliers of equipment (e.g. robots, grippers, load carriers, etc.) and users, such as the automotive industry, were scrutinized. One central approach is the Equipment as a Service (EaaS) business model. Here, the provider makes the equipment available to the user for a defined period of use. The aim is to analyze the advantages of this model and evaluate its contribution to sustainability. In addition, the focus is placed on a modular structure and the use of sustainable materials. The aim is to optimize operating resources with regard to their product carbon footprint (PCF) and design them in a resource-saving manner.

Interdisciplinary project consortium

To research these aspects, two production cells were set up in the Machine Tool Laboratory (WZL) at RWTH Aachen University. The AutoPilot joint project consists of a further seven companies and their corresponding roles in the project: EDAG Production Solutions (manufacturer of fixtures and equipment provider), Ligenium (manufacturer of load carriers and equipment provider), Johnson Electric (use case provider as an automotive supplier, especially for transmission technology and user of EaaS) and e.Volution GmbH (use case provider from the automotive industry and user), Capgemini Engineering (sustainability assessment), SEEBURGER AG (development of the digital platform) and Innoface AG (mapping of the digital twins).

The operation and remote maintenance of production cells requires the mapping of operating resources in the form of digital twins. The digitalized processes require a digital platform that is well networked with the company's PDM and ERP applications. The aim was to use existing applications commonly used by companies for PDM, ERP, MES and IoT as examples. In addition, these applications should be expanded for processing in a modern cloud-based data hub infrastructure and for data space use via appropriate integration mechanisms. To evaluate sustainability, a procedure was developed to determine the output PCF and to record and calculate the PCF from the operation of the production cell. In addition to relevant product information, the digital twin manages its own PCF and can therefore be used to calculate the product PCF.

Digital twins in action: Commissioning of the first prototype.

In November, the prototype of the demonstrator was put into operation in a joint workshop at the WZL. The production cell was also connected to its digital twin. The results show that this complex task can only be implemented through close cooperation between different teams of experts. On a positive note, the scenarios simulated in the project not only offer the expected economic benefits of highly automated and digitalized collaboration between suppliers of equipment and users, but also allow a significant contribution to be made to sustainability in production.