DEMONSTRATION OF AN INDUSTRIAL FRAMEWORK FOR AN IMPLEMENTATION OF A PROCESS DIGITAL TWIN

Digital twins have received a large amount of exposure around what they can offer to industry generating lots of noise, however there are few demonstrations utilizing published architectural frameworks. This has been addressed by investigating industrial publications and reports on what is the minimum essential requirements to form a digital twin and additional desirable features. From this, a generic industrial architectural framework of a digital twin has been established to utilize real-time information from a physical asset forming a monitoring digital twin. This has been expanded to incorporate a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to form a process digital twin utilizing structured information about the process. The framework, including the DES extension, has been validated on a reconfigurable fixture utilizing an established process that has been modelled using Siemens Plant Simulation. This result forms the start of a feedback loop presenting additional value transforming a monitoring digital twin into a process digital twin. This provides a solid foundation for discussion within the industrial community about defining the core functionality required for digital twins.