A regeneration process chain with an integrated decision support system for individual regeneration processes based on a virtual twin

Regeneration processes of complex capital goods such as components of aircraft engines are highly complex and require a multi-disciplinary perspective, bringing together expertise from different fields such as production engineering, image-based measuring technology, turbomachinery, and operations management. Sustainability requirements and digitalisation opportunities both demand and suggest systematic, flexible, and economically efficient design and operation of the regeneration process chains. This multi-disciplinary case study documents the design and operation of a cyber-physical system demonstrator for individual, flexible and economically optimised maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) actions on extremely valuable components of aircraft engines: high-pressure turbine blades. This system demonstrator hence brings together research results from different disciplines considered jointly in the German Collaborative Research Centre 871 ‘Product-Regeneration’. To cope with the substantial variability in used-good damage patterns and the resulting MRO actions, the system demonstrator operates with a virtual layer and uses a virtual twin of the object to be regenerated. In addition to a functional simulation, a central component of that virtual layer is a project-scheduling-based decision support system used to both select the MRO actions and control the shop floor. This paper hence describes how recent research results can be combined to achieve innovative, efficient, and sustainable regeneration processes.