# A Framework for 3D Plant Simulation of Meal-Kit-Packaging Robot Automation System
## 2 Materials and Methods
### Development of Robot-Automated 3D Simulation of Meal Kit Packaging Process  
As mentioned above, plant simulation is an emerging method for engineers to design an assembly line and test system performance before full-scale implementation [8]. By  
Figure 4: 3D modeling of delta robot with frame and gripper applied to the pick-and-place operation. (**A**) Delta robot frame; (**B**) delta robot; (**C**) pneumatic rotational gripper. Figure 5: 3D modeling of assembly line for automatic loading of individual meal kit products. (**A**) Automatic tray loader; (**B**) automatic antiseptic feeder; (**C**) pneumatic soup feeder; (**D**) rotary feeder; (**E**) elevated conveyor. developing an assembly of a 3D-plant simulation model, manufacturers can determine the optimal workflow as well as decrease bottleneck processes. In addition, it virtually allows for the evaluation of differences for different assembly line layouts such as manual process vs. robot-implemented process. This results in a reduced modification time and resource usage without the need for a physical prototype in an efficient way [6; 7; 8; 9]. To develop a framework of 3D plant simulation of the meal kit robot automation system, there are several steps. First, 3D modeling of the robot and devices are modeled by forward engineering using the CAD program and reverse engineering using 3D Lidar scanning. Designed 3D models are then imported to SIEMENS NX software for preprocessing, including alignment and noise reduction to create the initial meal kit assembly layout. The 3D assembly layout developed from NX software is exported to the robot simulation program. In the robot simulation program, the kinematics of the robot and the constraints and initial setting of the 3D simulation are defined and the cycle time of unit processes are calculated. The 3D simulation is exported to the SIEMENS plant simulation to calculate the performance of the developed robot automation such as utilization rate or throughput. In this research, a 3D simulation for the meal-kit-packaging robot automation is designed using SIEMENS Tecnomatix Process Simulate (TPS) V2301 (SIEMENS Inc., Munich, Germany) for tasks such as robot kinematic programming, cycle time planning, and human operations. The 3D plant simulation results are then analyzed using SIEMENS Plant Simulation (V22.0.1, SIEMENS Inc., Munich, Germany) to evaluate the efficiency and performance of the processes. The generated full process of the 3D plant simulation model of the robot, robot gripper, and rest of the production assembly machinery, such as the conveyor and automatic, individual meal-kit-product feeders, are imported to SIEMENS TPS for assembly. To develop the full process of 3D plant simulation, the initial setting needs to be configured. The single-delta-robot-implemented, for the manual existing process, and double-delta-robot-implemented robot automation system's availabilities, which represent the percentage of time the machinery performance capability is at 95% in a shift calendar with 5 days and 40 h per week as the operation setting, was configured. In addition, the mean time to repair (MTTR) which is the minimum time to reset all the devices to the original setting was set as 15 min [20]. The detail configuration of the 3D plant simulation and kinematic setting for the delta robot, gripper, automatic feeders, and rest of devices applied in the novel design of this meal-kit-packaging assembly line is explained as follows. Application of Delta Robot to Novel, Hybrid 3D Simulation of the Assembly Line for Robot Automation Packaging of Meal Kits  
In this research, we applied a delta robot to replace the manual process of individual meal kit loading into a tray to create a developed robot automation system. The delta robot is a three-armed, parallel robot which allows for high acceleration and a large range of motion with precise executing of pick-and-place motion [21].