Template-Based Production Modules in Plant Engineering

The example of the automatization ramp-up of the hydrogen electrolyzer production illustrates the complexity of plant engineering from scratch to production. Collaboration takes place in an interdisciplinary environment of several business and engineering units simultaneously. A complex chain of a multitude of process steps is created, as well as the exchange of data from various programs and simulations. With virtual commissioning (VC) and digital models of the plant, new possibilities arise to continuously validate the results of the planning process. As a result, there is a time advantage compared to traditional physical commissioning. There are always sudden market ramp-ups of products, for example, solar cells, car batteries, and fuel cells. Particularly due to the strong increase in demand for hydrogen electrolyzers, it is important to design the product and the production plant simultaneously. A plant manufacturer can respond to the increasing demand by pre-designing a configurable and scalable pool of production modules based on black-box approaches to the product in its various sizes, weights, etc. as is being investigated in the research project FertiRob. The aim of this paper is to present a concept of designing configurable production modules for a rough solution space. Templates created for a production module are shown, which can be accessed by a future plant configurator to customize the configurable modules and retrieve certain master data. Future research activities are aimed at securing the templates via a neutral data exchange platform (e.g., AutomationML, PLCopen XML, COLLADA) so that access is guaranteed via a configurator and all other engineering software.