Integrating material flow simulation tools in a service-oriented industrial context

In this paper a generic simulation environment is introduced that allows the integration of commercial and research-based simulation tools in a service-oriented manufacturing environment, such as in Industrie 4.0 factories, to support in flexible reconfiguration and scheduling decisions. For this purpose, the simulation environment is connected to a generic middleware and processes parameterized simulation requests via automated model generation and execution, based on current shop floor conditions. Those simulation requests are formulated in a standardized description language for production systems, in this case a derivative of AutomationML (AML) that was extended by simulation specific data sets. Therefore, the Simulation Environment comprises different tool- and non-tool-specific functionalities and components that allow the integration of simulation tools into industrial IT platform environments.