How to use real-time data from system to predict future performance?

[sandy_c]

I want to predict the production performance for the next hour, and the real-time data from MES system is as an input of model. How to work it in FlexSim ? I don't know how to get the right data to analysis because the input is dynamic changed. Does anyone have the similar application?

[tanner_p]

This is a current topic of conversation here at FlexSim - it's something that's being looked into as a future development opportunity. I'm probably not the right person to explain what it would take to make this work, but I can recommend that you look into using Excel Import/Export or PLC connections to provide "real-time" data for the model. This can handle the input of information from MES to FlexSim, but there's not really a way (that I've seen) of having the model talk back to the MES system and control production operations directly. That said, you could manually use the results of your model run to update MES.

If you make any headway with this or learn of someone who can successfully pair a FlexSim model to an MES system, please let us at FlexSim U.S. know.

[sandy_c]

@tanner.p, Thanks for the reply. I’d like to ask you more. If I get the “real-time” data from MES to FlexSim by excel, how can I predict the production performance because the “real-time” data is dynamic changed? For example, can we achieve both display the real-time operation information of a station and predict the performance after one hour in this station from FlexSim?

[tanner_p]

@Sandy C,

As of right now, I'm not aware of anyone who has successfully integrated "real-time" data into FlexSim using Excel. My initial comment was more along the lines of taking, say, an hour's worth of data from MES and then predicting (once), the next hour. I haven't seen this done in real-time, unfortunately. Nor have I seen any software that is capable of this yet. Based on my understanding, this is the next generation of SMART/IoT that has yet to be fully adopted by the masses. That said, I'm sure there are people exploring this. @Ralf Gruber, do you know of anyone who has successfully implemented a "digital-twin" model like Sandy has described?

[ralf_gruber · Accepted solution]

Sandy,

we have done two similar solutions ages ago, but none of them used Excel:

- First one was a warehouse with dynamically added put-away and retrieval tasks. This was based on an Orcale database though, but I do not see, why you should not be able to do that through Excel. You just have to connect to it through ODBC rather than the Excel interface. I haven't done this project by myself, so that is all I am able to explain to you.

- Second is also a fairly old one (V6), but still running. This has been established by the client himself. They wrote an own OPC client long before OPC was integrated with FlexSim and used that to get the online production data into FlexSim.

I do not see FlexSim itself to display both, current operation real time data as well as predicted (I assume simulated) data. I see that happening using a third application to display the realtime data and call FlexSim to run a simulation and provide predicted data that way.....but I am not a developer 😉

Good luck

Ralf