Testautomation for Machinery and System Construction
Automated testing for virtual commissioning, the real machine and the complete system.
expecco was developed in order to be able to meet all the challenges that companies are increasingly facing today. Shorter production times, increased cost and deadline pressure, growing variety and decreasing batch sizes – these are topics that many companies inevitably have to deal with. And not only the general digitalization, but also the automation of test processes can help.
Continuous test automation for more effectiveness and efficiency.
The networking of machines, devices, sensors and personnel plays a decisive role in process optimization and efficiency improvement. This results in complex, interlinked systems with a variety of interfaces to control systems, machines, simulators and the Internet. With increasing networking, complexity and variant diversity, how can stable and high-quality products continue to be delivered? This is ensured by end-to-end test automation.
Automated testing with expecco.
And this is possible with expecco. Because we supply and maintain all relevant interfaces in order to test the virtual commissioning, the real machine or complete systems automatically. For example, missing components are also simulated so that the entire system can be tested.
Your Benefit:
- Reduce internal testing efforts
- Realistic test scenarios of the overall system (end-to-end)
- Ready-to-use block libraries for your interfaces
- Testing of all product components with one tool
- High reusability through use in all test levels
- Minimal maintenance effort due to changeability at a central location
- For test participants with different competences (with/without programming experience)
- Audit-proof reports with the help of automated documentation
Timo Zimmermann
Senior Manager at SW-Controls, about test automation with expecco:
„Especially the technology variety which expecco supports combined with an extremely high degree of flexibility convinced us quickly. The very good and uncomplicated cooperation with eXept Software AG and the support have helped us in a short period of time to quickly get to grips with test automation in order to implement the first complicated issues from the user interface via distributed systems down to the fieldbus level. expecco sustainably increases the degree of automation and our software quality.”
Fields of application.
Test automation before commissioning.
The customer-specific assembly and testing of machines and systems prior to delivery requires a huge investment of time and money. This is extremely optimized by the use of expecco in combination with machine virtualization. PLC programs are tested and verified under real conditions in simulation. The machine simulator simulates in real time the behavior of the machine components involved (sensors, motors, actuators) via models on the real hardware bus. This makes it completely transparent for the PLC program whether a real or a simulated machine is connected to the bus. expecco uses the real machine interfaces (operating panels, process variables, cloud interfaces, apps, etc.) to run defined test scenarios. By accessing the simulation environment, error cases (sensor failure, wear, etc.) can also be integrated into the test sequences.
Test automation on the real machine.
Once the machines have been set up, the test sequences from virtualization can be used unchanged on the real system for acceptance tests. In addition, recurring sequences can be automated, allowing machines to be installed and configured more quickly.
Test automation of the overall system.
Updates in the machine environment, PPS systems and cloud services are tested against the machine interfaces to ensure smooth operation.
