The COVID-19 has become a global pandemic that dramatically impacted human lives and economic activities. Due to the high risk of getting affected in high-density population areas and the implementation of national emergency measures under the COVID-19 pandemic, both travel and transportation among cities become difficult for engineers and equipment. Consequently, the costly physical commissioning of a new manufacturing system is greatly hindered. As an emerging technology, digital twins can achieve semi-physical simulation to avoid the vast cost of physical commissioning of the manufacturing system. Therefore, this paper proposes a digital twins-based remote semi-physical commissioning (DT-RSPC) approach for open architecture flow-type smart manufacturing systems. A digital twin system is developed to enable the remote semi-physical commissioning. The proposed approach is validated through a case study of digital twins-based remote semi-physical commissioning of a smartphone assembly line. The results showed that combining the open architecture design paradigm with the proposed digital twins-based approach makes the commissioning of a new flow-type smart manufacturing system more sustainable.
Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Digital twins; Manufacturing system commissioning; Remote semi-physical commissioning; Smart manufacturing.
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