Pilot production environments driven by digital twins

Abstract

Establishing production environments requires joint decision-making by stakeholders from many disciplines at different levels of aggregation, because of the significant, unpredictable, and risky investments involved. Pilot plants offer a platform to develop, test, improve, and upscale (parts of) a production environment. They consist of physical and virtual components that are integrated, based on the digital twin concept. This concept synthesises sensoring/measurement (in situ and ex situ) with the modelling and simulation of existing and evolving resources/processes at operational, tactical, and strategic levels. Virtual dashboards supplement the pilot plant to provide an insightful basis for decision-making for all the perspectives and stakeholders involved.