Digital Twin of an Offshore Nodes Manufacturing Line Through Discrete Event Simulation

This study analyses the impact of implementing a “Zero Defects” strategy in an offshore nodes manufacturing pilot line located at the Navantia-Fene shipyard facilities. The analysis is carried out through the development of a Process Digital Twin, which works as the decision-making tool for the project. The development of this Process Digital Twin is divided into two stages. At the first stage, by using the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) software FlexSim, the manufacturing line is optimized both in production, to meet the customer's takt-time, and in economic terms. Once the final and optimal design of the line is obtained, the Process Digital Twin is developed in the DES software Tecnomatix Plant Simulation, software used by Navantia for this purpose. This Digital Twin is fed with data from the plant, extracted and sent to the cloud platform MindSphere, through the implementation of an OT/IT network.