Product Life Cycle Management With Digital Twins for Product Generation Development

Abstract

Digital Twins are virtual representations of a product-service-instance and, as a technology, represent an important part of the realization of Industry 4.0. They manage data of the associat-ed product instance and can also have functions for simulation to achieve cost and resource savings while simultaneously increasing product quality. In this paper, a need for action for the implementation of a systematic approach for the returning of data of Digital Twins into the product design is identified and a methodology is developed as an answer. This methodology realizes an information management, which supports holistic data and information flows. It de-fines necessary steps for the implementation of data and information transport, starting from a data management up to information provision in product design. Based on a performed potential analysis for the identification of intended uses in the context of product design, the overall ap-plication focus is narrowed down to the development of new product generations to support the requirements development. The concept structure consists of Digital Twins, a data mining sys-tem for the transformation of data into information and a presentation system for managing the information provided.