Typology of Manufacturing Digital Twins: A First Step Towards a Deployment Methodology

Abstract

The digital twin is not only a recent technology but also a polymorphic concept which generates a profusion of publications without real coherence because they relate to very different realities including various definitions, shapes, models and applications. If a wide variety of architectures are proposed, there is a significant lack of information on how to deploy a digital twin efficiently and how to define an appropriate architecture. We propose the first step of a complete deployment methodology consisting of a typology that defines the main criteria required to determine not only the digital twin components but also their organization. Based on different recent works that have been synthesized and completed, eleven criteria have been selected as representative of the set of usages and applications proposed in the literature. They will then allow us to propose a generic architecture that best meets the targeted application.