Digital twin in product development

Digital twin in product development

A report
To be submitted by:

Shantanu Shrikant Kadam

PRN no: 20213220181161210028

In partial fulfillment of
FOURTH YEAR ENGINEERING

IN

Mechanical
2022
 Digital twin in product development

Mechanical Engineering Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College,

Aurangabad-431003

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that SHANTANU KADAM has successfully completed seminar work
entitled “Digital twin in product development” in partial fulfillment of Third
Year B.tech (Mechanical) of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University,
Lonere.

Date:

Prof. Dr. Arvind Chel Prof. M. S. Kadam

Guide Head Of Department
Dr. H.H.Shinde
Principal
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I thank my seminar guide Prof. . Dr. Arvind Chel sir for his proper
admired guidance and valuable suggestions. Pleasure to have such
wonderful opportunity to expand my knowledge for my own branch. I am
indebted to other faculty members of Mechanical Department for giving

II
 Digital twin in product development

guidelines to present seminar report. If not for the above mentioned people
my seminar would never have been completed successfully.

I once again extend my sincere thanks to all of them.

Shantanu Shrikant Kadam

III
 Digital twin in product development

Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College, Aurangabad- 431003

ABSTRACT
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical product or
process,used to understand and predict the physical counterpart’s
performance characteristics. Digital twins are used throughout the product
life cycle to simulate, predict, and optimize the product and production
system before investing in physical prototypes and assets. By incorporating
multi-physics simulation, data analytics, and machine learning capabilities,
digital twins are able to demonstrate the impact of design changes, usage
scenarios, environmental conditions, and other endless variables –
eliminating the need for physical prototypes, reducing development time,
and improving quality of the finalized product or process.To ensure
accurate modelling over the entire lifetime of a product or its production,
digital twins use data from sensors installed on physical objects to
determine the objects’ real-time performance, operating conditions, and
changes over time. Using this data, the digital twin evolves and
continuously updates to reflect any change to the physical counterpart
throughout the product lifecycle, creating a closed-loop of feedback in a
virtual environment that enables companies to continuously optimize their
products, production, and performance at minimal cost. The potential
applications for a digital twin depend on what stage of the product life cycle
it models. Generally speaking, there are three types of digital twin –
Product, Production, and Performance, which are explained below. The
combination and integration of the three digital twins as they evolve
together is known as the digital thread. The term"thread" is used because it
is woven into, and brings together data from, all stages of the product and
production life cycles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Content page no.

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION vii - xi

CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE SURVEY xii - xx

IV
 Digital twin in product development

CHAPTER 3 - CORE CONTENT xxi -xxvii

CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSIONS xxix - xxxi

BIBILOGRAPHY xxxii

APPENDICES xxxiii-xxxiv

V
 Digital twin in product development

LIST OF FIGURES
Contents page no.
1.1 digital twin conceptualization vii
1.2 Virtual representation viii
1.3 Various stages of digital twin ix
1.4 Digital twin impact on industry 4.0 x
1.5 General Electricals digital twin technology xi
2.1 Data flow in digital model xiii
2.2 Data flow in digital shadow xiv
2.3 Data flow in digital twin xiv
2.4 The vision of the digital twin throughout the product
life-cycle following xvi
2.5 Physical twin and reference model for the digital
twin xvii
2.6 Different operation on the physical and the digital
twin xix
3.1 Digital twin conceptual architecture xxiii
3.2 Overview getting started with digital twin xxvi
6.1 Future technologies for digital twin xxxiv

LIST OF TABLES
Contents page no.
2.1 properties of the references modes For
the digital twin xvii
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
The digital revolution continually spawns new terms which become iconic
phrases and cliches, often only lasting for a short period of time. In the last
10 years, terms such as cloud computing, platforms, big data, smart cities,
machine learning, artificial intelligence (of the ‘weak’ variety), and so on

VI
 Digital twin in product development

have been coined to describe recent fashions in computation and

communication driving the automation of society ever further. The latest
term to be added to this arsenal of cliches is the ‘digital twin’ which has
suddenly taken on a new lease of life, being coined almost 20 years ago but
only finding widespread favour much more recently as digital infrastructure
becomes ever more embedded in our industries, cities and communities.

Fig. 1.1 digital twin conceptualization

The concept and model of the Digital Twin was officially put forward in
2002 by Dr. Michael Grieves as the conceptual model underlying Product
Life cycle Management (PLM). The concept was being practiced since the
1960s by NASA. They used basic twinning ideas for space programming
at that time. They did this by creating physically duplicated systems at
ground level to match the systems in space. An example is when NASA
developed a digital twin to assess and simulate conditions on board Apollo
13. The efforts were made keeping in mind only a particular mission and
because of that, this concept didn’t gain recognition until 2002 after Dr.
Grieves presented it with all the elements including real space, virtual space
and the spreading of data and information flow between real and virtual
space. The concept of integrating the digital and physical parts as one entity
has remained the same since its emergence. Although the terminology has
changed over the years till 2010 when it was subsequently called ‘Digital
Twin’ by John Vickers of NASA in a 2010 Road map Report. A Digital
Twin consists of three distinct parts: The physical part, the Digital Part and
the connection between the two. The ‘connection here refers to the data that
flows from physical products to the digital/virtual product and information
that is being available from the digital environment to the physical
environment.

VII
 Digital twin in product development

Fig. 1.2 Virtual Representation

Digital twin is the ability to take a virtual representation of the elements and
the dynamics of how an Internet of Things device operates and works. It's
more than a blueprint it's more than a schematic it's not just a picture it's a
lot more than a pair of glasses. It's a virtual representation of both the
elements and the dynamics of how an Internet of Things device operates
and lives throughout its life cycle. It's an understanding of all of its dynamics
whether those are electrons that move or whether it's the device that's
moving itself. It's about understanding the elements that compose it

put simply, a digital twin is a virtual model of a physical process, product,

service or system. Think of it as a bridge between the physical and digital
world. Smart components that use sensors to gather real time data are
integrated into the physical environment that is being
monitored/analysed/assessed. The components are connected to a cloud-
based system that receive and process all the data from the sensors. This
pairing of the virtual and physical worlds has been around since 2002 and
has traditionally been used to ‘simulate’ the physical world, allowing it to
be analysed and understood in order to gain insights into performance,
potential problems and areas of improvement.
The ‘traditional’ digital twin model has mainly been applied to the
manufacturing, automotive and health care sectors. In these sectors, the

VIII
 Digital twin in product development

technology is used to simulate processes, refine technology and monitor

and predict a patient’s well-being, respectively.

Fig. 1.3 Various stages of Digital Twin

The idea first arose at NASA: full-scale mockups of early space capsules,
used on the ground to mirror and diagnose problems in orbit, eventually
gave way to fully digital simulations.
But the term really took off after Gartner named digital twins as one of its
top 10 strategic technology trends for 2017 saying that within three to five
years, “billions of things will be represented by digital twins, a dynamic
software model of a physical thing or system". A year later, Gartner once
again named digital twins as a top trend, saying that “with an estimated 21
billion connected sensors and endpoints by 2020, digital twins will exist for
billions of things in the near future."
In essence, a digital twin is a computer program that takes real-world data
about a physical object or system as inputs and produces as outputs
predications or simulations of how that physical object or system will be
affected by those inputs.
The advancements in industry 4.0 concepts have facilitated its growth,
particularly in the manufacturing industry. The Digital Twin is defined
extensively but is best described as the effortless integration of data
between a physical and virtual machine in either direction. The challenges,
applications, and enabling technologies for Artificial Intelligence, Internet
of Things (IoT) and Digital Twins are presented. A review of publications
relating to Digital Twins is performed, producing a categorical review of
recent papers. The review has categorised them by research areas:
manufacturing, healthcare and smart cities, discussing a range of papers

IX
 Digital twin in product development

that reflect these areas and the current state of research. The paper provides
an assessment of the enabling technologies, challenges and open research
for Digital Twins.

Fig. 1.4 Digital twin impact on industry 4.0

Digital Twin is among the best key advances of the year. It is a combined
adaptation of the physical and the virtual world and an idea where each
industry gets a dynamic digital portrayal. Digital Twin incorporates
technologies like AI, machine learning and software analytics with
information to make living digital simulation models that update and
change with any change in their physical counterpart. Therefore, it gives
the company the edge of making an entire computerized footprint of their
entire product development cycle, from design to deployment. This digital
imitation of physical assets, operations, and frameworks produces data
continuously. This data causes organizations to give early notices,
anticipate downtime, and grow new open doors for the future by utilizing
reproductions.

X
 Digital twin in product development

Fig. 1.5 General Electricals digital twin methodology

Digital Twin is at the core of the entire Industry 4.0 development, which
enfolds automation, data exchange, and manufacturing processes,
producing endless opportunities for industries to grow. With its
technological advancement, Digital Twin delivers a more virtual system
based design process that leads to a much more active role out of any
equipment or system. By providing the exact digital replica of machines,
the technology helps operators to understand unique features, performance,
and potential issues on the virtual simulated model. Since the technology
supports real-time monitoring of a physical plant, with the help of sensors
attached to the whole setup, this allows the operators to a get prior alert of
the possible machine failures and/or threats of downtime and/or accidents.
With the real-time operation updates, industry workers are capable of
optimizing the performance of machines in real-time, monitor the
coordination between all the devices, perform the diagnosis on virtual plant
and repair the faults, if any, with minimal loss to productivity.
CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE SURVEY

Research paper 1
Werner Kritzinger provides a literature review with categorization of the
different contributions related to the Digital Twin. They are categorized in
terms of their levels of integration, their focused area and the technologies
used. Therefore, this section discusses the academic and theoretical
definition of the Digital Twin concept and its different levels of integration,

XI
 Digital twin in product development

followed by an overview of the fields of observation in context to

manufacturing and the key digital technologies.
Whilst physical twins have been around for some time, the first definition
of a concept nowadays known as the Digital Twin was made in 2002 by
Michael Grieves in the context of an industry presentation concerning
product life cycle management (PLM). The Digital Twin in its original form
is described as a digital informational construct about a physical system,
created as an entity on its own and linked with the physical system in
question. The digital representation should optimally include all information
concerning the system asset that could be potentially obtained from its
thorough inspection in the real world. (Grieves, Vickers 2017) A more
detailed and in the research field widely recognized definition is given by
Glaessgen, Stargel (2012): the “digital twin is an integrated multi-physics,
multi-scale, probabilistic simulation of a complex product and uses the best
available physical models, sensor updates, etc., to mirror the life of its
corresponding twin.” (Tao et al. 2017) The Digital Twin in its origin
describes mirroring a product, while the state of the art allows processes
(manufacturing, power generation etc.) to be as well subjects of virtual
space reproduction (“twinning”) in order to gain the very same benefits. By
the time, it was decided to name the concept the DT, first recognition has
already appeared in the aerospace world in form of NASA Technology
Roadmaps. (Shafto et al. 2010; Negri et al. 2017) A central aspect of the DT
is the ability to provide different information in a consistent format. Digital
Twins are more than just pure data, they include algorithms, which describe
their real counterpart and decide about action in the production system based
on this processed data. (Kuhn 2017; Boschert, Rosen 2016; Rosen et al.
2015) In terms of manufacturing, (Garetti et al. 2012) has the following
definition for a Digital Twin: “The DT consists of a virtual representation
of a production system that is able to run on different simulation disciplines
that is characterized by the synchronization between the virtual and real
system, thanks to sensed data and connected smart devices, mathematical
models and real time data elaboration. The topical role within Industry 4.0
manufacturing systems is to exploit these features to forecast and optimize
the behaviour of the production system at each life cycle phase in real time.”
(Negrietal. 2017) Due to the multiple existing solutions and concepts of a
DT across industries a diverse and incomplete understanding of this
concept exist.
2.2
Level of integration
Based on the given definitions of a Digital Twin in any context, one might
identify a common understanding of Digital Twins, as digital counterparts

XII
 Digital twin in product development

of physical objects. Within these definitions, the terms Digital Model,

Digital Shadow and Digital Twin are often used synonymously. However,
the given definitions differ in the level of data integration between the
physical and digital counterpart. Some digital representations are modelled
manually and are not connected with any physical object in existence, while
others are fully integrated with real-time data exchange. Therefore, the
authors would like to propose a classification of Digital Twins into three
subcategories, according to their level of data integration.

Digital Model
A Digital Model is a digital representation of an existing or planned
physical object that does not use any form of automated data exchange
between the physical object and the digital object. The digital
representation might include a more or less comprehensive description of
the physical object. These models might include, but are not limited to
simulation models of planned factories, mathematical models of new
products, or any other models of a physical object, which do not use any
form of automatic data integration. Digital data of existing physical systems
might still be in use for the development of such models, but all data
exchange is done in a manual way. A change in state of the physical object
has no direct effect on the digital object and vice versa.

Fig. 2.1 Data flow in digital model

Digital Shadow
Based on the definition of a Digital Model, if therefurther exists an
automated one-way data flow between the state of an existing physical
object and a digital object, one might refer to such a combination as Digital
Shadow. A change in state of the physical object leads to a change of state
in the digital object, but not vice versa.

XIII
 Digital twin in product development

Fig. 2.2 Data flow in digital shadow

Digital Twin
If further, the data flows between an existing physical object and a
digital object are fully integrated in both directions, one might refer to it
as Digital Twin. In such a combination, the digital object might also act
as controlling instance of the physical object. There might also be other
objects, physical or digital, which induce changes of state in the digital
object. A change in state of the physical object directly leads to a change
in state of the digital object and vice versa.

Fig. 2.3 Data flow in digital twin

The literature review shows, that the development of the DT is still at

itsinfancy as literature mainly consists of concept papers without concrete
case-studies. However, some applied case-studies already exist – especially
at the lower levels of integration (DM and DS). As shown, a main focus of
recent research concerning the DT in manufacturing is dealing with
production planning and control as it is a main data-sink within a
production system that ties everything together. Hence, it has a mid-level
time-horizon, simulation is often used in order to exploit the models at their
best. However, the DT can also be used in domains with higher time-
frequencies as e.g. process control and condition based maintenance,
without using time intense simulation, but using other data driven
approaches. There is a further research need for casestudies industrial
environments in order to evaluate the possible benefit of the DT.

Research paper 2

Benjamin Schleich states that the vision of the digital twin. It has been
argued, that ‘‘the vision of the digital twin itself refers to a comprehensive
physical and functional description of a component, product or system,
which includes more or less all information which could be useful in all –
the current and subsequent – life cycle phases’’ [4]. In the following, the
evolution of this vision is briefly illustrated, recent definitions of the digital
twin are discussed, and several viewpoints on it are addressed. 2.1. The

XIV
 Digital twin in product development

origin and evolution of the digital twin Prior to the industrial revolution,
physical artefacts were predominantly manufactured by artisans resulting
in unique instances of a given template. However, with the introduction of
the concept of interchangeable parts in the 18th century, the way products
were designed and manufactured rapidly changed as companies began to
strive for building copies of their products in mass production. Recently,
the paradigm of mass customization aims at combining these two
established manufacturing concepts to achieve low unit costs for
customized products. However, though such manufacturing paradigms
allow the fabrication of large quantities of similar, i.e. customized, parts or
products, these manufactured instances are mere unrelated copies. In
contrast to that, the idea of building a twin refers to producing a copy of a
part or product and using it for reasoning about other instances of the same
part or product – thus establishing a relation between multiple copies. This
idea is said to originate from NASA’s Apollo program, ‘‘where at least two
identical space vehicles were built to allow mirroring the conditions of the
space vehicle during the mission’’

However, over the past decades, advancements in computer technology

enabled establishing increasingly sophisticated virtual models of physical
artefacts as well as the fusion of such models for systems engineering
[6].These models not only serve for the design verification and validation
[7], but are also increasingly used as the master product model comprising
the model-based definition of required product characteristics [8].
Moreover, the evolvements in ‘‘microchip, sensor and IT technologies’’ [9]
paved the way for the advent of smart products, which track and
communicate their operating conditions and thus allow

XV
 Digital twin in product development

Fig. 2.4 The vision of the digital twin throughout the product life-
cycle following

to ‘‘feed’’ their product models with data about their status, such as
environmental conditions and loads. Beside this, modern sensing routines,
which go even beyond geometrical measurement and scanning, allow the
easy, quick, and reliable collection of large sets of data from physical
artefacts. Pattern recognition, data mining, deep learning, reverse
engineering, and other data analysis approaches make use of these dat sets
and unveil dependencies between product, process, and operational
characteristics that used to be hidden. The vast developments in simulation
technology as well as the increasing possibilities for gathering and
exchanging data from products thus allowed for building virtual twins of
physical products, which finally led to the present understanding of the
‘‘digital twin’’ vision. Probably the first definition of it was given by
NASA in their integrated technology road map (Technology Area 11:
Modeling, Simulation, Information Technology &
Processing Road map; 2010), which has been slightly adapted in
[10]: ‘‘A Digital Twin is an integrated multiphysics, multiscale,
probabilistic simulation of an as-built vehicle or system that uses the best
available physical models, sensor updates, flfleet history, etc.,
tomirrorthelife of its corresponding flflying twin’’ (Fig. 1). With some
similarity to this, GRIEVES defifines the digital twin as ‘‘a set of virtual
information constructs that fully describes a potential or actual physical
manufactured product from the micro atomic level to the macro geometrical
level’’.
The idea behind the comprehensive reference model is to extend and
transfer the above conceptual framework and to convey the scientifific
fundamentals of the geometrical product specifification language to the
vision of the digital twin. The novelty of this reference model is the
particular focus on the ‘‘twinning’’ between the physical and the virtual
realm. In this regard, we propose to endow the digital twin with an abstract
model that comprises all characteristics and fully describes the physical
twin at a conceptual level throughout the whole product life-cycle. Based
on this abstract model, thought experiments can be performed, which
allows to capture and understand as well as to clearly describe the physical
twin, its behaviour, and its environment at an

XVI
 Digital twin in product development

abstract level.

Fig. 2.5 Physical twin and reference model for the digital twin
(representation and abstraction).

The experiences from GPS standardization and recent research efforts on

tolerancing led to the insightthat only the differentiation between the real
workpiece, its abstract and conceptual model (Skin Model), and thevirtual
representation of this abstract model allows for a clear understanding as
well as a forward-looking language for geometrical variations
management. Consequently, the concept of Skin Model Shapes has been
developed for the virtual representation of the Skin Model based on discrete
geometry representation schemes [15]. With similarity to this, we propose
a differentiation between the abstraction of the digital twin and its
representation (Fig. 2). In this context, the model representation may
depend on the particular application and can involve various representation
and modelling paradigms.
The differentiation between a conceptual model and its virtual
representation for the digital twin allows achieving important model
properties (Table 1), such as model scalability, interoperability,
expansibility, and fifidelity. In this regard, the abstract model description
enables the defifinition of model operations at different scales, while
models for different interfaced parts and subassemblies of a product can be
conceptually queried and digital product models can beexpanded to system
models.

XVII
 Digital twin in product development

Table 2.1 Properties of the reference model for the digital twin.

Beside the Skin Model, the duality principle is anchored in the ISO GPS
standards. It allows the differentiation between a specification operator,
which covers a set of operations that are used to define certain geometrical
specifications on the Skin Model, and the verification operator, which
mirrors the specification operator and comprises the operations that are
required to verify the specification on the real part. Though the verification
operator mirrors the specification operator, there will always remain
uncertainties whether the verification operations fully comply with the
specification operator. This duality principle as well as the concept of
uncertainties is also conveyed to the reference model for the digital twin.
In this regard, the application of a digital twin to different scenarios and
tasks in design or production engineering dictates to apply certain
operations on the digital twin. These operations depend on the specific
application and are backed by physical counterparts (such e.g.
manufacturing or assembly operations).The abstraction of the digital twin
allows describing these operations on an abstract level, while their virtual

XVIII
 Digital twin in product development

‘‘representation’’ is performed specific simulation models. Due to the

nature of simulation models, obviously, uncertainties will remain between
the abstract description of a certain operation and its representation. We
propose here to classify the set of operations in four broad categories,
namely conversion, composition, decomposition, and evaluation.
Moreover, the ‘‘twinning’’ between the physical world and the virtual
world can be considered as observation and prediction.
Moreover, the ‘‘twinning’’ between the physical world and the virtual
world can be considered as observation and prediction. phases at a
conceptual level (Fig. 3). While the information transfer from the physical
to the digital twin is related to the observation and sensing of the physical
twin, the information transfer from the digital to the physical twin
originates from scientific assumptions, simulation, and virtual testing
models, with proper handling of uncertainty, used to predict certain
characteristics and the behaviour of the physical twin.

Fig. 2.6 Different operations on the physical and the digital twin.

Conclusion and outlook

The ability for assessing the consequences of product, process, and
servicing decisions employing virtual models is an important competitive
factor for modern manufacturing companies. The vision of the digital twin
refers to an entangled relation between a physical artefact and the set of
such virtual models. In this paper, the history and evolvement of the vision
of the digital twin as well as its current understanding and applications have
been portrayed. Beside this, current limitations to the implementation of
digital twins have been discuss and a comprehensive reference model for
the digital twin in design and production engineering has been highlighted.
Particularly, this reference model enables the clear differentiation between
a conceptual model and its virtual representation for the digital twin. The

XIX
 Digital twin in product development

application of this reference model to geometrical variations management

has also been sketched. The benefit of this paper for research as well as
industrial applications is the provision of a first theoretical and conceptual
framework for the digital twin, which is to be enriched by the design and
production engineering community in the future and which may lead to a
scientific discussion about the vision of the digital twin and its
implementation throughout the product life-cycle.

XX
 Digital twin in product development

CHAPTER 3 - CORE CONTENT

Industry and academia define a digital twin in several different ways.
However, perhaps neither group places the required emphasis on the
process aspects of a digital twin. For example, according to some, a digital
twin is an integrated model of an as-built product that is intended to reflect
all manufacturing defects and be continually updated to include the wear
and tear sustained while in use.3Other widely circulated definitions
describe the dig ital twin as a sensor-enabled digital model of a physical
object that simulates the object in a live setting.4 A digital twin can be
defined, fundamentally, as an evolving digital profile of the historical and
current behavior of a physical object or process that helps optimize business
performance. The digital twin is based on massive, cumulative, real-time,
real-world data measurements across an array of dimensions. These
measurements can create an evolving profile of the object or process in the
digital world that may provide important insights on system performance,
leading to actions in the physical world such as a change in product design
or manufacturing process. A digital twin differs from traditional computer
aided design (CAD), nor does it serve as merely another sensor-enabled
Internet of Things (IoT) solution.5 It could be much more than either. CAD
is completely encapsulated in computer-simulated environment that has
demonstrated moderate success in modeling complex environments;6 and
more simple IoT systems measure things such as position and diagnostics
for an entire component, but not interactions between components and the
full life cycle processes.7 Indeed, the real power of a digital twin—and why
it could matter so much—is that it can provide a near-real-time
comprehensive linkage between the physical and digital worlds. It is likely
because of this interactivity between the real and digital worlds of product
or process that digital twins may promise richer models that yield more
realistic and holistic measurements of unpredictability. And thanks to
cheaper and more powerful computing capabilities, these interactive
measurements can be analyzed with modern-day massive processing
architectures and advanced algorithms for real-time predictive feedback
and offline analysis. These can enable fun damental design and process
changes that would almost certainly be unattainable through current
methods.

A manufacturing process example Digital twins are designed to model

complicated assets or processes that interact in many ways with their
environments for which it is difficult to predict outcomes over an entire

XXI
 Digital twin in product development

product life cycle.8 Indeed, digital twins may be created in a wide variety
of contexts to serve different objectives. For example,
digital twins are sometimes used to simulate specific complex deployed
assets such as jet engines and large mining trucks in order to monitor and
evaluate wear and tear and specific kinds of stress as the asset is used in the
field. Such digital twins may yield important insights that could affect
future asset design. A digital twin of a wind farm may un cover insights
into operational inefficiencies. Other examples of deployed asset-specific
digital twins abound.9 As insightful as digital twins of specific deployed
assets may be, the digital twin of the manufacturing process appears to offer
an especially powerful and compelling application. Figure 1 represents a
model of a manufacturing process in the physical world and its companion
twin in the digital world. The digital twin serves as a virtual replica of what
is actually happening on the factory floor in near-real time. Thousands of
sensors distributed through out the physical manufacturing process
collectively capture data along a wide array of dimensions: from behavioral
characteristics of the productive machinery and works in progress
(thickness, color qualities, hardness, torque, speeds, and so on) to
environmental conditions within the factory itself. These data are
continuously communicated to and aggregated by the digital twin
application. The digital twin application continuously analyzes incoming
data streams. Over a period of time, the analyses may uncover unacceptable
trends in the actual performance of the manufacturing process in a
particular dimension when compared with an ideal range of tolerable
performance. Such comparative insight could trigger investigation and a
potential change to some aspect of the manufacturing process in the
physical world.

Creating a digital twin

But how does one create a digital twin? In general, the creation of the digital
twin encompasses two main areas of concern:

1. Designing the digital twin processes and information requirements

in the product life cycle— from the design of the asset to the field use and
maintenance of the asset in the real world.

2. The creation of the enabling technology to integrate the physical

asset and its digital twin for real-time flow of sensor data and operational
and transactional information from the company’s core systems, as
expressed in a conceptual architecture.

XXII
 Digital twin in product development

Digital twin process design and information requirements

The digital twin creation starts with process design. What are the processes
and integration points for which the twin will be modeling? Standard
process design techniques should be used to show how business processes,
people enabling the processes, business applications, information, and
physical assets interact. Diagrams are created that link the process flow to
the applications, data needs, and the types of sensor information required
to create the digital twin. The process design is augmented with at tributes
where cost, time, or asset efficiency could be improved. These typically
form the base line assumptions from which the digital twin enhancements
should begin.

Digital twin conceptual architecture

The digital twin conceptual architecture (figure 2) can rightly be thought of
as an expansive or “under the hood” look at the enabling components that
comprise the manufacturing process digital twin model of figure 1,
although the same basic principles may likely apply in any digital twin
configuration. The conceptual architecture may be best understood as a
sequence of six steps, as follows:13

XXIII
 Digital twin in product development

Fig. 3.1 Digital twin conceptual architecture

 Create: The create step encompasses outfitting the physical process
with myriad sensors that measure critical inputs from the physical
process and its surroundings. The measurements by the sensors can be
broadly classified into two categories:
(1) operational measurements pertaining to the physical performance
criteria of the productive asset (including multiple works in progress),
such as tensile strength, displacement, torque, and color uniformity; (2)
environmental or external data affecting the operations of a physical
asset, such as ambient temperature, barometric pressure, and moisture
level. The measurements can be transformed into secured digital
messages using encoders and then transmitted to the digital twin.
The signals from the sensors may be augmented with process-based
information from systems such as the manufacturing execution systems,
enterprise resource planning systems, CAD models, and supply chains
systems. This would provide the digital twin with a wide range of
continually updating data to be used as input for its analysis.

 Communicate: The communicate step helps the seamless, real-time,

bidirectional integration/connectivity between the physical process and
the digital platform. Network communication is one of the radical
changes that have enabled the digital twin; it comprises three primary
components:
a. Edge processing: The edge interface connects sensors and process
historians, processes signals and data from them near the source, and
passes data along to the platform. This serves to translate proprietary
protocols to more easily understood data formats as well as reduce
network communication. Major advances in this area have eliminated
many bottlenecks that have limited the viability of a digital twin in the
past.
b.Communication interfaces: Communication interfaces help transfer
information from the sensor function to the integration function. Many
options are needed in this area, given that the sensor producing the in
sight can, in theory, be placed at almost any location, depending on the
digital twin con figuration under consideration: inside a factory, in a
home, in a mining operation, or in a parking lot, among myriad other
locations.
c. Edge security: New sensor and communication capabilities have
created new security issues, which are still developing. The most
common security approaches are to use firewalls, application keys,
encryption, and device certificates. The need for new solutions to safely

XXIV
 Digital twin in product development

enable digital twins will likely become more pressing as more and more
as sets become IP enabled.
 Aggregate: The aggregate step can support data ingestion into a data
repository, processed and prepared for analytics. The data aggregation
and processing may be done either on the prem ises or in the cloud. The
technology domains that power data aggregation and processing have
evolved tremendously over the last few years in ways that allow
designers to create massively scalable architectures with greater agility
and at a fraction of the cost in the past.

 Analyze: In the analyze step, data is analyzed and visualized. Data

scientists and analysts can utilize advanced analytics platforms and
technologies to develop iterative models that generate insights and
recommendations and guide decision making.

 Insight: In the insight step, insights from the analytics are presented
through dashboards with visualizations, highlighting unacceptable
differences in the performance of the digital twin model and the
physical world analogue in one or more dimensions, indicating areas
that potentially need investigation and change.

 Act: The act step is where actionable insights from the previous steps
can be fed back to the physical asset and digital process to achieve the
impact of the digital twin. Insights pass through decoders and are then
fed into the actuators on the asset process, which are responsible for
movement or control mechanisms, or are up dated in back-end systems
that control supply chains and ordering behavior—all subject to human
intervention. This interaction completes the closed loop connection
between the physical world and the digital twin.

How to get started

Given the wide applications of the digital twin, how does one get started?
A major challenge in undertaking a digital twin process can reside in
determining the optimal level of detail in creating a digital twin model.
While an overly simplistic model may not yield the value a digital twin
promises, taking too fast and broad an approach can almost guarantee
getting lost in the complexity of millions of sensors, hundreds of millions
of signals the sensors produce, and the massive amount of technology to
make sense of the model. Therefore, an approach that is either too simplistic

XXV
 Digital twin in product development

or too complex could kill the momentum to move forward. Figure offers a
possible approach that falls somewhere in between.
Imagine the possibilities.
The first step would be to imagine and shortlist a set of scenarios that could
benefit from having a digital twin. The right scenario may be different for
every organization and circumstance, but will likely have the following two
key characteristics:

1. The product or manufacturing process being considered is valuable

enough for the enterprise to invest in building a digital twin.

2. There are outstanding, unexplained process or product-related issues

that could potentially unlock value either for the customers or the
enterprise.

Fig. 3.2 Overview Getting started with digital twin

After the shortlist of scenarios is created, each sce nario would be assessed
to identify pieces of the process that can provide quick wins by using a
digital twin. We encourage a focused ideation session with members of
operational, business, and technical leadership for expediting the
assessment.

Identify the process.

XXVI
 Digital twin in product development

The next step would be to identify the pilot digital twin configuration that
is both of the highest possible value and has the best chance of being
successful. Consider operational, business, and organizational change
management factors in identifying which configurations could be best
candidates for the pilot. Focus on areas that have potential to scale across
equipment, sites, or technologies. Companies may face challenges going
too deep into a specific digital twin of a highly complex equipment or
manufacturing process, while the ability to deploy broadly across the
organization tends to drive the most value and support: Focus on going
broad rather than deep.

Pilot a program.
Consider moving quickly into a pilot program using iterative and agile
cycles to accelerate learning, manage risk proactively, and maximize return
on initial investments. The pilot can be a subset of business divisions, or
products to limit scope, but with the ability to show value to the enterprise.
As you move through the pilot, the implementation team should support
adapt ability and an open mind-set—at any time of your journey, maintain
an open and agnostic ecosystem that would allow adaptability and
integration with new data (structured and unstructured) and lever age new
technologies or partners. While you should want to be agnostic to any type
of data sources (for example, new sensors and external data sources), you
also need a solution that can support the expansion of an end-to-end
solution (from early develop ment to after sales). As soon as the initial value
is delivered, consider building on this momentum to continue the drive for
greater results. Communicate the value realized to the larger enterprise.

Industrialize the process.

Once success is shown in the field, you can industrialize the digital twin
development and deployment process using established tools, techniques,
and playbooks. Manage expectations from the pilot team and other projects
seeking to adopt it. Develop insights on the digital twin process and publish
to the larger enter prise. This may include moving from a more siloed
implementation to integration into the enterprise, implementation of a data
lake, performance and throughput enhancements, improved governance
and data standards, and implementation of organizational changes to
support the digital twin.

Scale the twin.

Once successful, it can be important to identify opportunities to scale the
digital twin. Target adjacent processes and processes that have

XXVII
 Digital twin in product development

interconnections with the pilot. Use the lessons learned from the pilot and
the tools, techniques, and playbooks developed during the pilot to scale
expeditiously. As you scale, continue to communicate the value realized
through the adoption of the digital twin by the larger enterprise and share
holders.
Monitor and measure.
Solutions should be monitored to objectively measure the value delivered
through the digital twin. Identify whether there were tangible benefits in
cycle time, yield through put, quality, utilization, incidents, and cost per
item, among others. Make changes to digital twin processes iteratively, and
observe results to identify the best possible configuration.

Most importantly, this is not a project that should typically end once a
benefit is identified, implemented, and measured. To continually
differentiate in the market place, companies should plan time to move
through the cycle again in new areas of the business over time.

All in all, true success in achieving early milestones on a digital twin

journey will likely rely on an ability to grow and sustain the digital twin
initiative in a fashion that can demonstrate increasing value for the
enterprise over time. To help ensure such an outcome, one may need to
integrate digital technologies and the digital twin into the complete
organizational structure—from R&D to sales—continuously leveraging
digital twin insights to change how the company conducts business, makes
decisions, and creates new revenue streams.

XXVIII
 Digital twin in product development

CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSION
We are in the early development stages of the Digital Industrial Era where
the Digital Twin as yet is in it?s infancy. Despite this, we can catch sight of
tremendous transformations that lie ahead of us. These Digital Twins
epitomize asset ‘memories’ and even ‘group consciousness as they turn out
to be the ‘living models of physical entities. We are witnessing the major
applications of Digital Twins in the following sectors:

1. Manufacturing: Not only the emergence of Digital Twins helps us

manufacture high-grade products. But also we can salvage money and time
both, which would otherwise be wasted on the production. It facilitates
these firms to test new designs expeditiously. Talking about Visualized
Testing of a new supply chain, its a breeze, whereas testing the physical
equivalent involves shutting down production, losing profits, which on the
other hand can be like opening a Pandora’s box. Since digital twins can
give a real-time view of what’s happening with equipment or other physical
assets, they have been very helpful in manufacturing.

2. Automotive: As automobiles, especially cars, become progressively

integrated with IoT and digital technology, the ability to replicate every
detail becomes increasingly indispensable. With the help of digital twins,
it has become a piece of cake for engineers to predict the performance of
the machines. We can construct a digital twin of all sorts of autonomous
vehicles and track the vehicle from the day of its creation to the day it goes
to the junkyard. Engineers can test new safety features in the digital world,
without any need for the new physical vehicle to test changes. For a similar
reason, smart car producers are testing their self-driving AI in digital
environment too.

3. Healthcare: A digital twin can help virtualize a hospital system to

create a safe environment and test the impact of potential changes on the
performance of the system. Furthermore, Digital Twins in the healthcare
sector can identify faults with the various equipment (which is often very
expensive and needs to operate at optimum levels) involved in various
medical fields. Not just that but digital twin has helped doctors to carry out
difficult surgeries. Take an example of cardiologists, they used digital twins
of the patient’s heart to precisely determine the positioning of leads that
would work best on this specific patient that too before surgery decreasing
the risk of failure.
4. Retail: The implementation of this concept of a Digital Twin plays a
key role in augmenting the retail customer experience by manufacturing a

XXIX
 Digital twin in product development

simulation that could accurately represent how a specific model of a

product takes place in an individual’s life. Not only this but also it lets you
test if there is any potential in a new design of the product to cut back
expenses without having to make large scale physical changes to your
entire product range which can reduce the market price of the product.
Having an exact digital copy of your physical asset can lead to trendsetting
innovations. Once the innovation works well for digital model, one can
start investing in physical assets.

5. Smart Cities: Cities have numerous moving and interconnected

building blocks. With a well suited advanced model, civil engineers,
governments and other related companies can test new solutions in the best
possible way. This tool can prove highly advantageous for analyzing the
different forms of transport and pedestrian movement patterns and for
sound planning to ensure that their requirements are met. When prepared
with Machine Learning, this model can test possible solutions to problems
like traffic management in no time. This model would be beneficial in yet
another troublesome situations. Such as, in the case of a fire emergency,
firefighters can have access to the 3D model of the building. With the help
of Augmented Reality and AI, firefighters could know where people are
and how to predict fire’s behavior.

The global market for digital twins is expected to grow very rapidly.
Talking in numbers, by almost 38 percent annually, reaching $15.7 billion
by 2023, according to MarketsandMarkets research. But this is not as easy
as it seems as agencies face many challenges in constructing a digital twin.
Its construction is only the tip of the iceberg, the actual challenge lies in
lack of clear standards for implementing them, a need to train people to use
them and a plan for governance. Digital twins hold the potential to change
health care immensely in the future. They will allow the power to push past
the limitations of medicine, and utilize data as a tool to truly understand the
human body. Simulated organs can change how medicine works, in a
hyper-personal and less invasive way. With the view of the forthcoming, a
digital twin of cities is a possibility which could make search engines
capable of finding anything in the physical world. Human beings will also
have their digital twins, which will collect real-time information from
wearables and contain a user?s unique genetic code. Using this information,
many concerns such as health and crime issues can be solved. But all along
with the emerging technology, we will have to work through crappy stages
before we get the good stuff. A lot of big names such as Bosch, Microsoft,

XXX
 Digital twin in product development

IBM, GE and many more have started investing in this technology and the
ones who lag may suffer a downfall for their companies.

The digital twin may drive tangible value for companies, create new
revenue streams, and help them answer key strategic questions. With new
technology capabilities, flexibility, agility, and lower cost, companies may
be able to start their journeys to create a digital twin with lower capital
investment and shorter time to value than ever before. A digital twin has
many applications across the life cycle of a product and may answer
questions in real time that couldn’t be answered before, providing kinds of
value considered nearly inconceivable just a few years ago. Perhaps the
question is not whether one should get started, but where one should start
to get the biggest value in the shortest amount of time, and how one can
stay ahead of the competition. What will be the first step, and how will you
get started? It can be an overwhelming task to get there, but the journey
starts with a single step.

XXXI
 Digital twin in product development

BIBILOGRAPHY
[1] Werner Kritzinger, “Digital Twin in manufacturing: A categorical
literature review and classification”, Elsevier (2018) 1016–1022

[2] Benjamin Schleich, “Shaping the digital twin for design and production
engineering”, Elsevier CIRP-1598

[3] Aaron Parrott, “Industry 4.0 and the digital twin”, Deloitte University
Press.

[4] Steve Brown, “Digital twin: the Altranpoint of

view”, Altran
technologies

[5] “GE Digital Twin Analytic Engine for the Digital Power Plant”, GE
Power Digital Solutions

[6] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-digital-twin/

[7] https://www.rowse.co.uk/blog/post/an-introduction-to-digital-twins

XXXII
 Digital twin in product development

APPENDIX
What lies in future?
The digital twin is here to stay, proliferate, and will soon become a critical
part of future manufacturing. IDC predicts that by 2030, 30% of G2000
companies will use data from digital twins of products connected to the
internet of things (IoT) to improve innovation, success rates and
productivity, and achieve gains of up to 25%.[7] Therefore, it is important
to have a closer look at the technologies that will impact the lifecycle of the
digital twin. Figure 5 depicts the various technologies that will influence
the future lifecycle phases of the digital twin.

Fig. 6.1 Future Technologies for Digital Twin

Blockchain and its distributed ledger technology have a potential interest in

providing the required security and transparency to serve as a commonly
shared platform. Combining MindSphere as the operating system of the
digital twin, and SettleMint’s distributed middleware, Siemens has already
jumpstarted the creation of Blockchain enabled digital twins.[8] As noted
above, digital twin requires fragmented data silos to be abolished and
replaced by an integrated storage technology. By securing the common
repository, Blockchain will be able to make digital twins permanent,
immutable and decentralized. Therefore, they cannot be deleted or changed
and can be accessed from multiple locations. Generative design is also
gaining popularity and will define how the future digital twins are created
and used. Airbus uses generative design to explore thousands of variations
for the partitions that divide airplane cabins. The resulting design was half
the weight of the previous design—saving millions of dollars in fuel costs

XXXIII
 Digital twin in product development

while continuing to meet all safety requirements. The new design also
proved to be stronger and performed better than the heavier original that
had flown for decades.[9] Although quantum computing is not yet
enterprise-ready, the technology is moving forward at a rapid pace, and it
is expected that it’ll be ready for prime time within the next five years.
Biogen developed first-of-its-kind quantum-enabled molecular comparison
application in collaboration with Accenture and quantum software firm
1QBit that could significantly improve advanced molecular design to speed
up drug discovery for complex neurological conditions such as multiple
sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s Disease.[10] Early
stage start-ups like Twaice[11] and Cognata[12] , are also bringing the
future of digital twin to life. Twaice uses digital twin to create the future of
mobility by increasing battery life and reliability while reducing
development and testing costs. Cognata uses digital twin for autonomous
driving and ADAS simulation. Altran’s Research & Innovation (R&I)
organization has setup “Future of Industry” and “Future of Engineering”
programs. These programs are driving several research projects, which are
shaping the future of the digital twin.

XXXIV