digitaler Zwilling

Digital twins are an important part of the Industry 4.0 idea. They mirror physical goods in the digital world and enhance them with additional capabilities and functions for analysis, forecasting and decisionmaking. This paper contributes to the classification and assessment of Digital Twins using a multidimensional maturity model. The presented method "DT-Assess" enables an application-specific assessment of Digital Twins. The developed maturity model consists of seven categories with a total of 31 characteristics to be evaluated. The systematic evaluation in five application scenarios allows, for the first time, a classification of the respective "digital twin" implementation or concept with the aim of identifying further development options and weaknesses.

The increasing shortage of IT specialists requires lower-skilled employees to be empowered to perform tasks that previously required the involvement of experts. Industry 4.0’s emerging technologies for human-technology interaction and for the digital twin allow the design of intuitive user interfaces, system-independent communication interfaces, and user-specific assistance functionalities to meet this challenge. This paper presents a framework for configuring and monitoring of process flows for different production and logistics systems. By reviewing existing programming approaches, the paper derives requirements for the framework, describes its general architecture and the technical realization of the modular interaction interface. A prototypical implementation validates the presented concept on the example of a cellular conveyor system and a collaborative robot system.

The quality of injection-molded components is becoming increasingly important in polymer technology due to extended areas of application with higher mechanical loads. As established methods of quality assurance are increasingly reaching their limits, the digital twin as a basis for cross-process and cross-company data analysis opens up new possibilities in plastics technology for proactive and predictive monitoring and improvement of process and component quality when processing plastics into technical components.

A fast flow of information throughout the entire supply chain is unavoidable for risk minimization and is not subject of a discussion in volatile times or crisis situations. The flow of information within the supply chain is characterized by various forms of transmission: EDI, cloud applications or other system interfaces are manifold in the areas of value-added networks for digital risk monitoring and process efficiency increase. If corporate processes are examined more closely, one area remains digitally underrepresented at the moment: The digital twin of a production tool. The handling of these production tools must now be taken to a new level.

Due to the possibility of operator intervention, semi-autonomous systems allow for a better handling of complexity than fully autonomous systems. The use of a digital twin provides a novel interface for interaction with such systems. This paper describes the implementation of the control and user interface in a system with a digital twin. It is shown how the developed control architecture can be combined with different methods of human-machine interaction and virtual training. With this extended use of the control system by a digital twin the concept can be extended beyond the operation phase and can be used in other phases of the product life cycle.

The digital twin is well on the way to becoming an elementary part of the corporate world. Corporate leaders hope that these intelligent images of an increasingly dynamic corporate reality will significantly reduce complexity. Ideally, model-based analyses and (partially) automated decisions using methods of simulation technology and artificial intelligence based on optimized IoT data management can make their contribution to corporate agility. In addition to the definition of terms/concepts, the paper will discuss current challenges and present various examples of their application. Based on these ideas, a process model for the introduction of digital twins in terms of technology migration will be presented.