Industry 4.0, Internet of Simulations and Simware

SIMWARE SOLUTIONS S.L.

[email protected] www.simware.es

The Industry 4.0, the Internet of the Simulations and

Simware

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.simware.es/



1 INTRODUCTION

Industry 4.0 is about the digital industry disruption in all kind of industries: big data and advanced

analytics, the Internet of Things, digital modeling, additive manufacturing, virtual reality, robotics

and artificial intelligence, intelligent sensors, cloud computing, software as a service, smartphones

and other mobile devices. Industry 4.0 embraces and combines all of them together to make a whole

that is vastly greater than the sum of the parts. Industry 4.0 embeds all these elements in an

interoperable global value chain, shared by many

companies from any country.

Industry 4.0 is dubbed the 4th industrial

revolution because of its huge impact in the way

companies will design new products,

manufacture them and support the products

when operated by their customers.

Modeling & Simulation technologies are already

key in the design, development and support of

new products. Model based system engineering

allows to design products faster, virtual

prototypes allow to reduce the number of physical

prototypes produced during the development of a

new product, virtual simulators allows also to

train operators and engineers in the operation

and maintenance of the products. But Industry

4.0 will disrupt also the way to use M&S,

increasing its use and value because under the

Industry 4.0 model, product design and

development take place in simulated laboratories

and utilize digital fabrication models. The

products themselves take tangible form only

after most of the design and engineering

problems have been worked out

This paper discusses the new requirements that Industry 4.0 is asking to M&S and how our

company, Simware Solutions, is responding to them with our Simware platform.

Adoption of Industry 4.0, by Sector






2 VALUE OF M&S IN THE INDUSTRY 4.0

Industry 4.0 promises to optimize the industrial

processes, allowing to design and build more

complex products, usually “smart” and connected,

faster and more efficiently. Industry 4.0 will not

only invent new products but also new services, as

mass customization, predictive maintenance,

online upgrade of products after they are sold (in

the same way that software has come to be

updated), etc.

Industry 4.0 will leverage networked production

systems to produce new generations of smart and

connected systems. Smart manufacturing

processes will be applied to the development of

smart systems, known also as cyber-physical

systems or CPS using the Internet of the Things

terminology1. A Smart system can be defined as a co-engineered interacting network of physical

and computational components.

A relevant part of this optimization will be achieved by adopting a design-centric workflow,

supported by digital product models, understanding as such a virtual model of the product

containing all the elements of mechanical, electrical, electronics and software and its virtual

interactions. Under the Industry 4.0 model, product design and development will take place in

simulated laboratories and utilize digital fabrication models. Only in this way companies will be

able to develop and upgrade smart products faster and at a competitive price to success in the

market.

Digital product models will enable the

Simulation based system engineering of

the smart product, covering the whole

life cycle:

Validation of concept of

operations and requirements

Virtual prototyping

Testing

Training

Predictive maintenance

Analysis of futures upgrades to

the product

1 To know more about CPS goes to https://www.nist.gov/el/cyber-physical-systems

Going faster to the market

The capability to perform virtual

prototyping and automation in

manufacturing industries is

critical as industries seek to reduce

the time moving through each

engineering phase

Experimentation

Virtual Design

Training & support

Predictive maintenance

Testing

Product Updates

Digital Model



https://www.nist.gov/el/cyber-physical-systems



3 THE INDUSTRY 4.0’S REQUIREMENTS FOR SIMULATION

Industry 4.0 is dealing with the development and operation of smart systems, which are by

definition connected products, in which their capabilities are improved and optimized by other

products and services available in the network. Development of these products will be performed

by virtual supply chains, with networked engineering and productions systems.

The capability to leverage the network, achieving a seamless digital integration, will be key, both

for the design & manufacturing of the smart product and for its operation. In this context, if we

want to use Modeling & Simulation techniques to support the life cycle of the system, we will need

to work with Net-Centric and interoperable models and simulations. In the same way that the

physical product evolves to the Internet of the Things, its digital model will need to evolve to an

Internet of the Simulations, in which heterogeneous simulations of the diverse physical and cyber

subsystems of the smart product can

interoperate without restrictions.

But, till now, model based engineering and

virtual prototypes use to be supported by

simulation tools that are designed to work in

standalone configurations or, at most, with

point-to-point connections to other simulators.

Interoperability between simulations tools is

then very limited, reducing the capabilities of

the engineers to leverage the best features and

capabilities of several simulations tools in an

integrated solution. This is a problem when

you need to do concurrent engineering of a

smart system composed by different physical

and software components.

In a business context in which companies usually work in virtual supply chains, for example in

virtual integrated engineering teams to design a new product, simulation technologies must evolve

to work integrated across the boundaries of the companies. Here, open and interoperable net-

centric simulations are essential to provide to the engineering teams the capability to validate

requirements and designs in virtual worlds, composed by a combination of real equipment and

simulations from the different partners. An evolution of the simulation to the cloud, in order to use

the modeling & simulation as services (MSaaS concept) is requested to fulfill this objective.

Digital product models of the smart products will be required also to be integrated in training

solutions, that can be accessible to a large number of customers at the same time. This requirement

will change the traditional way to design a training device: as a standalone device located in a

training center. Training for the smart products will be provided as a service to the customer using

Internet or embedded in the smart product. Web-based training services and embedded trainers

will reuse the models and simulations of the product to provide an immersive training experience

to the users of the product, using virtual reality /Augmented Reality devices.

In a world of smart products, whose capabilities can be monitored and updated remotely,

simulation technologies will be also important to provide a better service to the customers during

the use of the product. For example, simulations can be used to predict future performances and

failures in an aircraft engine, based on actual data collected in real time, providing indicators for

a predictive maintenance of the connected product. Simulations can be also used to test new

features to include in a new version of the embedded software of a product line of appliances,

integrating a virtual prototype of the new feature in a synthetic scenario integrated with live

systems (real appliances already located at homes and in the test facilities of the manufacturer).

Again, the capability to leverage the network will be essential in this case.

Simulation in Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 demands an evolution of the M&S

technologies, doing imperative requirements that

nowadays are very uncommon in the industry:

Open Simulations

Net-Centric Simulations

M&S as a Service

Seamless interoperability

Integration with the real product.





4 THE INTERNET OF SIMULATIONS

The Internet of simulations or IoS is the next revolution of modeling & simulation technologies.

IoS is about to embrace technologies as internet, distributed systems, open platforms, cloud

computing and service oriented architectures for the development and deployment of digital

models and simulations.

IoS is about the evolution of the simulation products and solutions from their proprietary and

stovepipe architectures, designed to work standalone, to Net-Centric, open and interoperable

solutions ready to connect and collaborate with smart systems.

IoS allows to deploy the models and simulations as services in the Cloud, enabling new business

models as M&S as a Service (MSaaS), Simulation Platforms as a Service (SPaaS) or Web based

Training (WBT). These new business models will expand the scope of application for simulations,

making them accessible to more people and organizations. Till now, even when costs for simulation

systems have decreased in this century, high-fidelity simulation is still expensive, difficult to

develop, operate and maintain, therefore only available for large organizations, as big

manufacturers for virtual prototyping, or airlines and military forces for virtual training.

IoS is a lever also for key industry 4.0 processes as collaborative design & development of new

products. IoS enables the design and development of new products in simulated laboratories and

utilizing digital fabrication models, making a reality the co-simulation concept. Co-simulation is

an approach for the joint simulation of models developed with different tools (tool coupling) where

each tool treats one part of a modular coupled problem. Hence, the modeling is done on the module

level without having the coupled problem in mind. Furthermore, the coupled simulation is carried

out by running the simulations in a black-box manner, as independent pieces of software

exchanging simulated data in a discrete way with the other models in the network. IoS enables the

integration of in-house software and hardware components with simulation services and platforms

provided by trading partners in a virtual supply chain (using MSaaS and SPaaS business models).

For example, a drone manufacturer could integrate a digital model of the drone in a virtual wind

tunnel, provided as a service by a specialized partner during the aerodynamic design of the

unmanned air platform.

IoS is also an enabler for specific smart systems’ business models as predictive maintenance or

embedded training:

A car manufacturer can monitor the condition of the equipment in a connected car, collect

the data about the driving procedures and use this information to predict when the

maintenance should be performed. Predictions would be calculated using simulations

running a digital model of the car in remote servers.

An embedded simulation could be added to the software of an aircraft. When maintenance

people connect to the computers in the aircraft, the embedded simulation will provide

training or recommendations to the support engineers.

Besides training and support to the engineering life cycle, IoS enables other applications as to use

the simulations as decision support tools to decide the best course of action in an emergency. For

example, a network of biosensors deployed in a smart city detect a pathogen and the authorities

must manage the outbreak of the pathogen event in a dense urban area. They will use simulations

to analyze the evolution of the event in the city, helping to plan the countering actions.





5 IMPLEMENTING IOS WITH SIMWARE

IoS requires a new "technology infrastructure", that allows to provide simulation services with a

hybrid deployment, combining some components onsite and others on the cloud. Our Simware

platform is the leading networked technological infrastructure for IoS. It is providing the

mechanisms to connect the simulators to the network and to share data between the publishers

and subscribers or consumers of the data. Simware provides a data-centric architecture to enable

the co-simulation concept, connecting heterogeneous simulations from different tools in a common

simulation data-space.

Simware platform is based on a microservices architecture, named Layered Simulation

Architecture or LSA. LSA is the first microservices architecture for simulation, specifically

designed to support the development of real time and Net-Centric simulation products. As any

other microservices architecture, LSA allows to decompose the simulation product into small and

easily manageable components. Microservices are called Entities in Simware and interoperate

with other entities by exchanging data through a distributed simulation runtime infrastructure,

that is working as the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) of the simulation product. Service based

architecture in Simware platform allows to separate the Intellectual property (IP) from the

interface: entities in Simware are black-boxes that exchange data without exposing the proprietary

IP to the network. This is a very important feature to build trust in virtual supply chains, for

example when working in collaboration for the design of a new product.



http://www.simware.es/products.html


http://www.simware.es/lsa.html



Simware is both a dev framework and an integration platform. As a development platform,

Simware provides a loosely coupled architecture2, composed by multiple layers that can be used

alone or in collaboration, depending on the project’s requirements. Simware layers provided

everything you need to develop real time Net-Centric simulations that can be deployed on

simulation servers or in dedicated simulation facilities. Simware tools and APIs allow to build any

kind of simulation entity in compliance with the best practices in Agile software and system

engineering as set-based design, model-driven development, test-driven development, continuous

integration/delivery, DevOps, etc. You can know more about the unique features of Simware as an

Agile development platform at http://www.simware.es/agile-simware.html

As an integration platform, Simware platform integrates heterogeneous components, both

simulated and real, very easily, allowing the design and development of new products in simulated

laboratories. System engineers can use Simware to integrate all kind of COTS, legacy and partner’s

software using Simware’s open APIs and its compliance with the main standards in the market.

Simware is already compliant with many industrial standards, already common in simulation and

IoT industry (take a look to the full list at http://www.simware.es/simware--standards.html ) and

it is easy to integrate almost any component using the tools and APIs in Simware.

2 To know more about Simware architecture,




http://www.simware.es/agile-simware.html

http://www.simware.es/simware--standards.html



6 USE CASES

Simware platform supports the whole life cycle of the system engineering of any smart product.

Simware is useful from the conception to the retirement of the product:

Read below how Simware can be useful to many key processes in the life cycle of a complex smart

product, as:

- Experimentation of concepts and requirements

- Design & testing of the product

- Training

- Support and maintenance.

You can visit also our website to know more about specific Industry 4.0 applications for Simware:

http://www.simware.es/markets.html



http://www.simware.es/markets.html



6.1 EXPERIMENTATION.

Simware can be used to experiment with new concepts, systems and procedures. Simware enables

the development of synthetic environments that can be integrated in real scenarios, to interoperate

with live systems. In this way, engineers and designers can experiment with new concepts of

operations and technologies for new or existing products in a safe and secure environment.

One example is to use digital models of cities and driverless cars to experiment with the integration

of driverless cars in the city’s traffic. Simware can be used to integrate a complex simulation

composed by simulations of the autonomous car, traffic, pedestrians, traffic lights, man in the loop

simulators, etc. Live systems could be also integrated to the simulation network, as a live car

getting simulated data in an augmented reality device or a network of smart sensors feeding real

time information about the traffic conditions to the traffic simulator. Simware data-centric

architecture is especially designed to this kind of solution, where many heterogeneous components,

live and simulated, must interoperate in a common virtual space.

This complex simulated laboratory could be used to experiment with new AI technologies for

autonomous vehicles, using a mixed scenario of real and simulated traffic to test the performance

of the new algorithms in real traffic conditions. This laboratory could be also used to experiment

with new procedures to optimize the flow of traffic in the cities, for example by managing traffic-

lights based on real time conditions in the streets.





6.2 VIRTUAL DESIGN

Simware supports the co-simulation concept, enabling the collaborative design of new products in

a digital laboratory, using virtual prototyping techniques. Our Net-centric simulation

infrastructure allows the collaborative development of integrated digital models, working with

virtual prototypes of the new product in a shared simulated environment. Open interfaces allow to

integrate all kind of simulation tools, 3D and simulation engines and virtual reality devices in a

common simulation domain. Data-Centric architecture enables the easy integration of all kind of

simulations with real components and embedded software, without exposing IP, only sharing

simulation data in a common simulation cloud.





6.3 TESTING

Testing of industrial products demands the integration of heterogeneous simulations with

hardware components, part of the configuration of the real product. Simware platform is very well

suited to this kind of applications, because of its capability to abstract from the actual

implementation of the different components through its data-centric and middleware based

architecture. A common simulation infrastructure allows to integrate easily simulated and

operational components in a simulation-based test-site, enabling both hardware in the loop (HIL)

simulation and Man in the Loop Simulation.

As an example, you can find here how Simware can be used to implement a test-site for the

development of a transmission control system, as this shown in the figure3.

Test-site is developed as a simulation solution composed by the integration of several tools:

Engine and transmission modeled in Simulink

Transmission control unit prototype of the real component

Vehicle dynamics using a 3D racing car simulator.

Simware as simulation platform.

Driver cockpit running on web browser

In this solution, Simware is the “glue” of the test-bench, providing a common Net-Centric

simulation infrastructure in which several simulations can exchange simulation data in a

synchronized way. Simulations could be running on the same laboratory or in a distributed

environment, with several simulation running from remote servers.

3 Example included in proceedings paper, Mckee, DW, Webster D, Xu, J, Battersby,D. Divider: Modelling and Evaluating Real-Time service-

oriented cyberphysical co-simulations. 2015 IEEE 18th International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing.





6.4 TRAINING

Simware extends the applicability of simulation based training to new products and business

models. Simware is both useful to improve the actual training devices and to develop new products

and services for training:

- Simulator manufacturers can leverage Simware platform to develop in an agile way the

traditional training devices, from procedures trainers to high fidelity simulators, going

faster to the market and increasing its productivity. Besides to increase in-house

productivity, manufacturers can leverage Simware to improve the collaboration with their

virtual supply chain, using the simulation as services (MSaaS) or using the platform as a

service (SPaaS), to build the training device as a “lego”. Any simulator manufacturer,

regardless of her size, can leverage Simware to develop a simulator as the integration of

heterogeneous simulations provided by partners, therefore enabling the collaborative

design and development of any kind of training device.

- Companies can leverage our simulation infrastructure to deploy their training devices in a

hybrid deployment, with some simulation capabilities deployed on the simulator’s

manufacturer and some other located in a dedicated training center, managed by a training

services provider

- Companies can deploy web-based trainers using the net-centric capabilities embedded in

Simware platform.

- A smart product manufacturer can provide embedded training features in her products

only by integrating a simulation component provided by a sim manufacturer into her

product.

As an example, Simware can be used to deploy a simulator as a smart product, with a hybrid

deployment, composed by some components located on the premises of the training provider and

others located in the manufacturer’s facilities. This hybrid deployment makes easier the

maintenance and support of the simulator,

providing a better level of support to the

customer, using techniques as condition based

support or predictive maintenance.

This smart simulator would be also connected to

external apps to increase their capabilities, for

example by adding real time weather

information to its exercises or to connect with

other training devices to train as a team,

emulating real conditions.





6.5 SUPPORT TO THE DEPLOYMENT

Once the smart product has been deployed, Simware is useful to develop tools and applications

that support the operation of the product:

- Augmented reality apps can be developed to support technicians doing the maintenance of

the product. Simware supports the development of web and mobile apps that can be

connected to simulation servers in the cloud or to simulations embedded in the product.

These simulations, running digital models of the product and its components, will support

the technician during his maintenance tasks, providing recommendations and

troubleshooting guides.

- A car manufacturer can use Simware platform to provide the simulation component on a

predictive maintenance application. This app will monitor the condition of the equipment

in a connected car, collecting the data about the driving procedures and analyzing this

information along with the information about various components of the vehicle from

suppliers and other users to predict when the maintenance should be performed.

Predictions would be calculated using simulations running a digital model of the car and

its components in remote servers. Any company can leverage open APIs and standard-

based interfaces in Simware to connect to the main Industrial IoT platforms in the market

to provide this kind of integrated solution, in which Simware based simulations provide a

prediction of the future health of the system based on actual patterns of use in the

customer.





7 SUMMARY

Modeling & Simulation (M&S) technologies and platforms must evolve in order to meet the new

requirements requested by Industry 4.0. In the same way that the industry embraces the IoT

concepts, both in their life cycle processes and the products and services they provide to the

customers, support technologies as is M&S must evolve to the network, embracing the new concept

of the Internet of the Simulations or IoS. IoS is about the evolution of the simulation products and

solutions from their proprietary and stovepipe architectures, designed to work standalone, to Net-

Centric, open and interoperable solutions ready to connect and collaborate with smart systems.

IoS allows to deploy the models and simulations as services in the Cloud, enabling new business

models as M&S as a Service (MSaaS), Simulation Platforms as a Service (SPaaS) or Web based

Training (WBT). IoS is a lever for many key processes in the engineering life cycle of a smart

product, from its conception to its deployment, enabling important improvements in productivity,

collaboration and lead times.

IoS requires a new "technology infrastructure", that allows to provide simulation services with a

hybrid deployment, combining some components onsite and others on the cloud. Our Simware

platform is the leading networked technological infrastructure for IoS. It is providing the

mechanisms to connect the simulators to the network and to share data between the publishers

and subscribers or consumers of the data. Simware is the first and only microservices architecture

for simulation in the market, specifically designed to support the development of real time and

Net-Centric simulation products as the integration of many small and easily manageable

components.

Simware platform is useful both as a development technical framework and as an integration and

deployment infrastructure. Simware is an agile and flexible set of tools, libraries and APIs that

supports the whole life cycle of the system engineering of any smart product : from its conception

to its retirement.

8 ABOUT SIMWARE SOLUTIONS

Simware Solutions is leading the introduction of Open platforms into the Simulation & Training

markets. Our platform Simware leverages the new Layered Simulation Architecture or LSA to

fulfill the requirements of the lead users of the industry, which are demanding open architectures,

better interoperability and increasing economical returns for their investments in simulation and

training solutions.

Our platform is the first commercial product in the market supporting the Internet of Simulation

concept. IoS is about to embrace technologies as internet, distributed systems, open platforms,

cloud computing and service oriented architectures for the development and deployment of open,

net-centric and interoperable simulations

Simware is the only simulation platform in the market supporting Net-Centric simulation without

restrictions, enabling new business models for simulation as the use of simulation as a Service

(MSaaS) or the use of simulation platforms as a service (SPaaS).

Our whole portfolio is only based on open standards and APIs, enabling the seamless connectivity

and interoperability with almost any other product and solution in the market.





Industry 4.0, Internet of Simulations and Simware

Technology

Transcript of Industry 4.0, Internet of Simulations and Simware