The “Development of the Digital Twin of Plant and Process” line seeks to develop the capacity to develop digital twins of Navantia’s production facilities and processes, through the development of demonstration pilots that manage to highlight the functionality of this type of solutions, validating their practical usefulness in improving workshop and production management.

In this way, this line will be demonstrated through the execution of three pilot projects that will guide the entire development process:

• An automated cell for the assembly of brackets. This cell includes a handling robot and an automated welding robot.
• An automated cell for the manufacture of minor pre-frames and/or intermediate products (base plate plus reinforcements) belonging to the group of the smallest construction elements of a ship (dimensions 1m x 1m x 1m and maximum weight of 15Kg). The manufacture will consist of the collection of the elements from the transport unit and the incorporation and welding (with their inspection) of the reinforcement elements on the base plate.
• The new Navantia Ferrol sub-block workshop. This workshop will be built during the duration of the CEMI and therefore cannot be started from the start of the CEMI, but it is the most interesting environment with the greatest potential for Navantia Ferrol because it is a fundamental process in the manufacture of the blocks of a ship and it will be a new workshop that will adopt a linear manufacturing scheme. This fundamental change with respect to the traditional model of work in workshops will require exhaustive control of the progress and planning of the activities at each work station to avoid incidents that stop the line, but in exchange it will allow for higher levels of productivity, performance and reduction of deadlines, for which the digital twin solution will be a fundamental technology to achieve these ends. For this reason, it has been chosen as the third and main application case of the digital twin because it is a complete workshop in which the integration of machines and sensors with the digital twin will be carried out from the beginning of the construction of the workshop.

Additionally, as part of the goal of developing the plant’s digital twin, this initiative will analyze and develop applications for viewing the twins on tablets, mobile devices, and Virtual and/or Augmented Reality glasses that allow viewing and interacting with the plant twin (following the applicable safety requirements) and performing maintenance, inspection, and data visualization tasks.