Modeling the Operation of a Digital Twin of a Conveyor Line

Conveyor lines are widespread in the automation of production in many industries, both in the Russian Federation and in other countries. They provide automatic interconnection of the main processing centers in the enterprise. Their structure is constantly becoming more complex. Industry 4.0 technologies are used to create digital twins of technological equipment. The analysis of simulation results of digital twins significantly reduces the risks of unreasonable technical decisions, which helps to minimize the costs of finding the best options. The research goal is to optimize the performance of a closed conveyor line using simulation modeling of a complex model. The analysis of a looped conveyor line providing control of several types of automobile gearboxes is performed. The structure of a mass service system for the simulation of the conveyor line has been developed. Based on this structure, a discrete-event model of the conveyor line was developed. To describe the behavior of products and a pallet, agent models that describe the states through which products and a pallet pass during production have been developed. The AnyLogic software platform was used to build a complex simulation model of the conveyor line based on the discrete-event and two agent-based models. As a result of the simulation, the optimal number of pallets and the optimal batch size of products were determined. Computational experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed mass service system to describe a looped conveyor line.