Structured Development of Digital Twins—A Cross-Domain Analysis towards a Unified Approach

Abstract

Digital Twins (DT) as digital representations are increasingly becoming operational design tools in a variety of contexts. Although a common understanding of the concept and the underlying development procedure would facilitate DT applications, only limited information has been published on the essential stages of development and fundamental development activities. This paper examines the extent to which an abstract, and thus generally applicable model for the development of Digital Twins can be identified. In order to come up with such a reference procedure, a structured analysis of published development experiences has been performed. Three major application domains, namely product lifecycle management, manufacturing, and predictive maintenance, could be detailed and cross-checked. For each of these domains, a contextual development model could be derived from empirically valid design and engineering practices. The data also allowed for the determination of which way each model corresponds to existing Digital Twin concepts. The use of a standard modeling notation enabled the integration of the domain-specific models into a single Digital Twin development model. As a result, developers are guided by domain-independent and -dependent development steps. Due to its generic structure, the model can serve for further domain explorations.