Design of Digital Twins for Optimization of a Water Bottling Plant

The advent of Industry 4.0 has resulted in a paradigm shift in the role of assembly lines in a manufacturing system. Previously, assembly lines were the central component in bringing about mass production. However, the shift in focus from mass production to mass customization has resulted in several changes to the traditional assembly line. A notable change is the need to create a Digital Twin, which can replicate physical assets, processes and systems that fulfill the various processes in a real world plant. This paper looks at creating a Digital Twin for the optimization of a water bottling plant in a production line. The Digital Twin utilizes an Open Platform Communication server to collect sensor information from the production line through a PLC. Once the Digital Twin has processed the information, the applied solution can then be sent back to the Open Platform Communication server and read in by the individual PLC's to reduce bottlenecks and production delays. This is accomplished by setting up a Digital Twin with three SMART Manufacturing Units that are tasked with the production of 500ml water bottles. Here premade 500ml bottles are fed into the system, filled by the first SMART Manufacturing Unit, capped by the second and thirdly packaged to order. The Digital Twin will be used to analyze the performance of the SMART Manufacturing Units connected in a production line. This performance can then be used as an estimation of how well the physical production line can hope to perform and give an indication of time to market.