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COVER STORY

8 March 2019 Control Engineering Europe

DIGITAL TWINS SPEED UP THE

COMMISSIONING PROCESS

Tronrud Engineering produces automation solutions and machines. Among other

things, this Norwegian machine building company has made a name for itself with

its packaging machines. In developing and commissioning these machines, the

company is now taking a completely new direction. Annemarie Loetzsch reports.

programming, installation and

commissioning time – was reduced

by 50%.

Digital twins

Tronrud Engineering had already

relied on products such as Teamcenter,

the NX Suite, TIA Portal and other

digital tools, because it understands

that the implementation of new ideas

and technologies can strengthen the

competitive position of the company.

Tronrud now works consistently with

digital twins and takes full advantage of

virtual commissioning.

All components and electric circuit

diagrams, as well as the entire

automation system at Tronrud

Engineering are now developed in

completely virtual environments. This

allows the behaviour and interaction

of all components to be tested, even at

early stages of development.

By using a fully digital development environment with a digital twin of the new machine,

designers, electrical planners and programmers can work simultaneously on the same project

and exchange information continuously.

T

he recipe for success of

Tronrud Engineering AS is

simple: supply high quality,

marketable products, always

according to schedule at

affordable prices. In a highly complex

environment like machine building,

however, this can only be done with

an acute intuition for new possibilities,

with the ability to implement new

ideas in the right context and, not

least, with an appropriate measure of

courage.

This is fully consistent with the

motto ‘Putting ideas into practice’.

Borne along by this pioneering spirit,

Tronrud Engineering has repeatedly

adopted new approaches over 40

years and has developed from a

one-man business into an agile and

internationally successful machine

building specialist employing 200

people at three locations.

One current example of the

company’s pioneering spirit is a

completely new packaging machine

for pillow bags into which, for

example, potato chips or lettuce leaves

are packed. The new development

takes into account the challenges that

production companies in the food

and beverage industry have to cope

with today: shorter times-to-market,

improved flexibility and efficiency,

as well as a higher product quality.

The demand, above all, is for flexible

machines that operate quickly and

allow a quick changeover between

products. The new packaging machine

is groundbreaking in this respect:

occupying almost the same floor space,

it can pack 300 pillow bags per minute

into cartons – almost twice as many as

the current industry standard.

Digital development

environment

Tronrud Engineering put its trust

in the Digital Enterprise Suite from

Siemens: “The development of the

new packaging machine began with a

presentation model that was created

using NX Mechatronics Concept

Designer (MCD) and TIA Portal”,

explains programming engineer Kjell

Erik Meier.

By using a completely digital

development environment

with a digital twin of the new

machine, designers, engineers and

programmers were able to work on

the same project simultaneously and

continuously exchange ideas. This

meant that the total development

time – in other words the design,