Digital Twins - Definitions, Classes and Business Scenarios for Different Industry Sectors

Abstract

Over the recent years, several attempts were made to define the concept of the Digital Twin and to create a generic view for utilizing it within the industry. Still, many industry sectors are not able to transfer a generic definition into their product portfolio, as Digital Twins differ from each other to the same degree as physical products differ from each other. Hence, it is crucial to enlarge the definition towards a classification and business scenarios which enable sector specific views on the concept of the Digital Twin and help SME to utilize the concept towards their products. Future engineers will have to design physical products besides a digital counterpart and therefore have to identify interdependencies between these two products during the development. This paper discusses a generic definition of a Digital Twin that can be applied throughout different sectors as well as a classification for Digital Twins to enable the implementation of the concept on several maturity levels regarding the constraints of the product portfolio. In addition, these classes are viewed in different business scenarios and an outlook is given to further increase the usability of Digital Twins within new industry sectors.

A survey on the industry's perception of digital twins – a follow-up to the digital twin workshop at the DESIGN Conference 2022

“…The results of the simulations and calculations can then be used to display them to a user, who then makes decisions based on them. Alternatively, the Digital Twin can make decisions within a previously defined range and make recommendations for action, such as the replacement of critical components (Wilking et al, 2021). Even though Digital Twins are based on models for calculation and simulation, the Digital Twin concept differs from conventional simulation.…”

“…Digital Twins have a multitude of potentials for developers, manufacturers, and users of products. Some of these potentials are, for example, condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, monitoring of performance, and adjustments of the operating parameters of the product (Wilking et al, 2021). Digital Twins can be applied to diverse industries and types of systems.…”

Digital Twins of existing long-living assets: reverse instantiation of the mid-life twin

“…In practice, the holistic, interconnected representation of the complete product or asset is not necessary or feasible. Digital Twins serve purposes and thus must only represent the needed component and (sub-)system [18]. According to the previously cited references and common understanding found in literature, the DT is based on models (Digital Master) from the product's development (BOL) [3], as depicted in Figure 2.…”

Digital Twins and Product-Service Systems: A Synergy with Challenges and Opportunities

“…While the type of information that is acquired and where it is stored depends on the specific application, each individual product has its own digital representation; For each instantiated Physical Twin there is a Digital Twin -hence there is the Twofold of Twins (Laukotka et al, 2021). Most concepts presented in literature describe the Digital Twin as a combination of a Digital Master Model -a template originating from the product development -and a Digital Shadow -a dataset acquired from the Physical Twin (Stark et al, 2020;Laukotka et al, 2021;Wilking et al, 2021).…”