The Role of Digital Twins for Trusted Networks in the “Production as a Service” Paradigm

Abstract

Saturated markets and the continued need to lower costs drive the evolution of modular and networked Smart Factories also in reply to the trend towards an individualized customer demand driven mass-production. The accelerating digitalization of industries support the migration from Industry 3.0 which focuses on automation to Industry 4.0 where digital twins of both, the product and production itself enable this paradigm shift towards a networked production. Digital twin representations have evolved from definitions of the German Platform “Industry 4.0” since 2017 starting from asset administration shells (AAS) that describe services being offered from assets like products, machines, sensors and software components. Together with OPC-UA as future standard, asset administration shells allow vendor independency and active networking in product design and manufacturing. This enables a new degree of interoperability and thus facilitates the new paradigm of networked production embracing manufacturing across different enterprises. This has the potential to drive outsourcing and just-in-time supply chains to a new level with disruptive implications for conventional product provisioning. Virtual factories could be designed by production elements acquired in a highly dynamic platform-based economy. In addition to this fundamental shift, the technology progress of wireless connectivity results in new interfaces for 5G networks in vertical industries offering deterministic and reliable ad-hoc connectivity of people, machines and factories where needed. The network itself will be treated as an asset in near future being described and managed by an AAS. The digital twin of 5G user ends and network gears will help to forecast potential network loads in given industrial applications and to negotiate the quality of service parameters needed in the actual application, i.e. latency and reliability of a 5G connection. Other recent international initiatives related to trustworthiness focus on the development of trusted architectures in these networked production settings which will further push the evolution of digital twins. Finally, emerging auction-based digital business models enable a new monetarization of services and the negotiation of costs of production under consideration of new aspects such as environmental constraints, CO2 footprints and corresponding additional costs resulting of i.e. energy, waste, and resources supporting sustainability in a circular economy. Thus, digital twins break with traditional paradigms and open up amazing opportunities in the engineering phase of collaborative production schemes. All this will be further supported by artificial intelligence services and powerful Cloud-Edge infrastructures that will help to match the technological, business and ecological requirements and to mitigate between service requester and supplier in a platform economy as a valuable first step in reaching climate neutrality per design.