Design and implementation of an MDA interface for flexible data capturing

The need for high flexibility to react to market changes and customer demand is constantly growing for both short‐ and long‐term success of companies that want to succeed in global markets. The simulation of material flows in modern factories offers these companies the possibility to plan and optimize their floor shops in a fast and cost‐efficient way and enables them to react to changes and malfunctions. The most expensive factor in such simulation experiments is the data capturing process from the actual factory. This paper describes the concept and implementation of a generic interface for machine data acquisition into the simulation system d³FACT insight. The interface enables data transfer from a real production system into simulation to initialize and update the simulation model. Within this approach the Devices Profile for Web Services specification will be used. By the use of the developed approach, simulation tools are doing one step further to a possible daily use.