Sequence Planner: Supporting Integrated Virtual Preparation and Commissioning

Journal article, 2017

It is essential to understand the operation sequences of a production system when designing or changing it. This paper will demonstrate how the software tool Sequence Planner (SP) not only supports this understanding by sequence visualization, but also improves the solution using optimization and verification. SP is a tool for modeling and analyzing automation systems. The tool has been developed since 2007 with an initial focus on supporting engineers when developing control code for programmable logical controllers. Today, SP is a micro-service architecture, usable in various areas like runtime control, online monitoring, energy optimization, and even emergency department patient planning. This paper presents a use case at an automotive company, where the operation sequences in a large number of automated robot stations, need to be modified. SP, together with virtual commissioning tools, automates this modification by identifying, optimizing, verifying and simulating operation sequences, and then updates the robot and control programs. This use case demonstrates the strength of SP and its architecture and how it is used for integrated virtual preparation and commissioning.