Model-Based Virtual Commissioning of a Manufacturing Cell Control System

Abstract: One of the preferred options of manufacturing organizations to survive in today’s market is to automate, increase flexibility and configurability of manufacturing lines. Control systems and Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programming are quintessentially important part of an automation system. However, PLC programming and debugging takes time and is error prone; consequently, there has being a growing need for quick development of PLC programs and inexpensive code verification and validation methods. To meet the needs, this thesis paper presents a method of virtual development of control system for a fully automated manufacturing cell. The cell has two robots and five other machines, which each machine operating modes are modeled in MATLAB environment and PLC code is generated from the developed models. The model and their associated PLC code are verified and validated in virtual environments. Step-by-step development, verification and validation approaches are presented and argued. Results show that few hours of modeling efforts can generate thousands of lines of code; hence this method is expected to significantly reduce time, development efforts and costs associated with verification and validation of PLC code. Keywords: PLC Code Generation, Simulink/Stateflow Model, Verification and Validation, Manufacturing Cell.