With the help of virtual assemblies, digital twins are realized that are indistinguishable from the real system. By combining real and virtual components, companies can "operate" a plant as early as the concept phase. They thus carry out real commissioning on virtual components and use their shadow systems in parallel with real production.
Today, companies can only manufacture machines and plants economically, in high quality and with short delivery times if they configure them largely from reusable modules (mostly mechatronic assemblies). Virtual assemblies that behave 1:1 like real assemblies in terms of interfaces, behavior in control real time and parameterization enable the creation of digital twins that correspond 100% to their real counterparts.
They serve as the basis for reliable integration and system tests, which companies can use to ensure the quality and performance of new or adapted production systems even before they go into production. The effort required for such tests can be reduced using test automation methods and the test quality can be massively increased at the same time. The prerequisite for this is hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation systems with virtual assemblies that control users or test machines through real controllers in the sense of a system test.