Digital Twin Based Optimization of a Manufacturing Execution System to Handle High Degrees of Customer Specifications

Lean production principles have greatly contributed to the efficient and customer-oriented mass production of goods and services. A core element of lean production is the focus on cycle times and designing production controls and buffers around any bottlenecks in the system. Hence, a production line organized by lean principles will operate in a static or at least quasi-static way. While the individualization of products is an interesting business approach, it can influence cycle times and in-time production. This work demonstrates how performance losses induced by highly variable cycle times can be recovered using a digital twin. The unit under analysis is an industrial joiner’s workshop. Due to the high variance in cycle time, the joinery fails its production target, even if all machines are below 80% usage. Using a discrete event simulation of the production line, different production strategies can be evaluated efficiently and systematically. It is successfully shown that the performance losses due to the highly variable cycle times can be compensated using a digital twin in combination with optimization strategies. This is achieved by operating the system in a non-static mode, exploiting the flexibilities within the systems.