Model Based Development and Virtual Commissioning in Practice: A novel approach to establish innovative development methods in industrial environments

Due to several challenges like faster development cycles or growing customer demands the enginee-ring of machines and plants is becoming increasingly complex. Methods like model-based development and virtual commissioning (i.e. an early commissioning of plant control by means of virtual machine models) are known in theory, academia and industry. These methods can significantly contribute to time, quality and cost challenges within the development of machines and plants. However, the application and implementation of these methods and related tools is extremely difficult. In practice the usage often fails because of a lack of willingness and knowledge. In addition, innovative methods also require new work- and data-flows in the respective enterprises. Therefore, the challenge is to cope with historically grown structures. For this reason, this paper proposes an approach to address the challenge of introducing model-based development and virtual commissioning in enterprises in the field of machinery and plant engineering. After presenting a novel three-step methodology to introduce these methods the paper proposes an industrial application example.