Standardized implementation of digital twins in manufacturing

Abstract

Industries are observing massive transformation due to the advent of the fourth industrial revolution which is all about empowering traditional production systems with capabilities like machine intelligence and autonomous decision-making to facilitate collaborative production between machines and humans. Hence, researchers, scientists, and many industrial organizations are working on numerous technologies to transform existing production systems. Digital twin (DT) is one of such key technologies that facilitates this collaboration and thus helps in realizing a network of more efficient, reliable, and optimized production systems. A DT is a fit-for-purpose digital representation of a physical object or process, along with the means to permit the physical instance and the digital instance at a suitable rate of synchronization [1]. Despite the great potential of DT technology, there are significant challenges associated with its implementation. One major challenge is the lack of standardization in DT development. Because DTs can be used to simulate a wide variety of physical systems, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating them. This lack of standardization can make it difficult for companies to develop and share DTs, which can slow down the adoption of the technology.