Development of a process modeling method for supporting engineering activities based on digital triplet

Abstract

“Digital Triplet” is a concept proposed to support manufacturing system engineers by combining the knowledge and know-how of expert engineers with digital technology. This study proposes a method to represent engineering processes executed by engineers in a reusable manner based on Digital Triplet. Specifically, we develop a procedure to create a "log-level description" that records an engineering process as it is and a “generalized process model” that generalizes multiple log-level descriptions, using a process modeling language named “PD3” (Process Modeling Language for Digital Triplet). In a case study, expert engineers first executed engineering processes to improve production speed on a simplified production line. Next, log-level descriptions and a generalized process model were created for the engineering processes by the proposed procedure. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted on novice engineers using the generalized process model, and the results suggested that the model is effective for education. Currently, creating log-level descriptions or generalized process models is a labor-intensive task as it is done manually based on the subjective judgment of the person representing the processes. However, we showed the application of "process mining" techniques has the potential to partially automate the task of creating the models.