Approach to a simulation-based verification environment for material handling systems

Modern material handling systems (MHS) are complex systems which are controlled by various control units on different automation levels. The design of the MHS facility layout and the development of the control units require many different CAE tools but simulation and virtual commissioning does currently not play a significant role. This paper presents an approach towards an integrated simulation-based verification and virtual commissioning environment for all phases of an MHS project. During the first phase a material flow simulation of the plant model is conducted to analyse and confirm the planned performance indicators. The model is reused for testing and verification of the control units such as material flow controller or programmable logic controllers. An automatic equivalence inspector identifies differences between simulation results.