A LEGO® Manufacturing System as Demonstrator for A Real-Time Simulation Proof of Concept

Digital models for planning and control of production systems are a key asset for manufacturers to gain or maintain their leadership. However, these models are often based on frameworks that do not take into account the real-time dimension, hence it is arduous to exploit them for taking short-term decisions over complex systems. The goal of this work is to prove the applicability of a Real-Time Simulation (RTS) framework that prescribes to exchange current-status data from a manufacturing system and to run alternative simulation models to decide the next moves. For this scope, we exploit a LEGO® Manufacturing System (LMS) together with a discrete event simulator that plays the role of its digital model. The results of this proof of concept show that the proposed framework can effectively be used to find better production rules for a manufacturing system in real-time manner.