Towards Logistics 4.0: A Skill-Based OPC UA Communication between WMS and the PLC of an Automated Storage and Retrieval System

In order to bring intralogistics systems to the same level of interoperability as today’s modern production systems, logistics must take the essential steps towards Industry 4.0. This requires an increasing abstraction level of control logic as an enabler for horizontal and vertical integration. The abstraction will lead to the interconnection of manufacturing and logistics control with the production planning and warehouse management systems (WMS). A main enabler for these communication paths are service-oriented architectures (SoA). OPC UA has established itself as a widely used and already adopted SoA-based communication standard in industry. The paper describes the realization of an OPC UA-based approach for the communication between a WMS and a PLC of an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS). The conceptual basis of communication design are skills of the ASRS. The work is supported by an architectural design with a subsequent prototypical implementation

Towards Logistics 4.0: A Skill-Based OPC UA Communication between WMS and the PLC of an Automated Storage and Retrieval System

In order to bring intralogistics systems to the same level of interoperability as today’s modern production systems, logistics must take the essential steps towards Industry 4.0. This requires an increasing abstraction level of control logic as an enabler for horizontal and vertical integration. The abstraction will lead to the interconnection of manufacturing and logistics control with the production planning and warehouse management systems (WMS). A main enabler for these communication paths are service-oriented architectures (SoA). OPC UA has established itself as a widely used and already adopted SoA-based communication standard in industry. The paper describes the realization of an OPC UA-based approach for the communication between a WMS and a PLC of an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS). The conceptual basis of communication design are skills of the ASRS. The work is supported by an architectural design with a subsequent prototypical implementation

Application Environment for the demonstrators and test case

The MASCADA framework are tested within three different manufacturing domains, i.e. car manufacturing (the test of MASCADA), in electronics manufacturing, and in steel production

Kabul Times. (Kabul, Afghanistan), 1970-09-30

Kabul Times. (Kabul, Afghanistan), 1970-09-30; Volume 9; Number 15

COMBINING AGENT-BASED SUPPLY NET SIMULATION AND CONSTRAINT TECHNOLOGY FOR HIGHLY EFFICIENT SIMULATION OF SUPPLY NETWORKS USING APS SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT Another trend is that APS systems increasingly be-This paper introduces an approach for highly efficient simulation of supply networks in which several nodes use advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems. APS systems increasingly become part of bigger companies IT landscape. Today, APS systems communicate only with the ERP system they sit on top of. If APS systems would be able to communicate with each other, qualitatively new processes for planning collaboration in supply nets could emerge. Simulation is accepted to be an useful approach for support of business process design. Design of planning processes which should exploit APS systems requires simulation systems with integrated APS functionality. We augmented an existing, agent-based simulation system by an APS component which we developed based on finite domain (FD) constraint technology. In this paper, we present our simulation system with special focus on the APS component, and results of a simulation experiment which was used for the proof of concept.