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Today, most digital twin initiatives and projects are focusing on specific assets or certain tasks: normally an independent machine or a production line. But another huge potential of this technology emerges when the scope extends beyond the factory walls. This is where the digital twin at ecosystem level makes sense. It represents not only one organization, but the entire network of suppliers, partners, customers and distributors which are key for the whole functioning of a company.
In the globalized world and interconnected economies that are currently immersed in, it is key for companies to ensure their supply chain works smoothly and without interruption provoked by any disturbances such as geopolitical tensions or other issues. It is also a key activity for them to make sure that their customers will be attended as they should.
From Factory Twin to Network Twin
A machine-level twin can predict failures; a plant twin can optimize production. On the contrary, an ecosystem-level digital twin can anticipate supply chain disruptions, balance production capacities across multiple companies and foster new forms of collaboration within the whole supply chain. Some examples are:
- In the automotive sectors, suppliers could connect their digital twins with the OEM’s twin to synchronize inventories, delivery schedules and maintenance needs.
- In the energy sector, power plants, grid operators, distributors and industrial consumers could align their twins to optimize usage and build resilience.
The Interoperability Challenge
The main challenge to make this approach work is to ensure interoperability of the whole process to be represented. Normally, each company develops its digital twin using different platforms, data models and technologies. In case, there is interest of connecting them, the user would need to take into account the next actions:
- Data standards: common models that describe machines, processes and resources consistently.
- Secure communication protocols: enabling real-time data exchange without compromising cybersecurity or intellectual property.
- Federated architectures: rather than centralizing everything, a distributed approach would be required, where each twin retains control over its data but shares what is necessary.
- Governance and trust frameworks: legal agreements and governance models to define what data is shared, under which conditions and at what level of access.
Opportunities for Industrial Clusters
Even if there are several challenges to make a ecosystem-level digital twins operable and making it work, it brings lots of opportunities such as:
- Resilience: with a proper digital twin and a good simulation system, it could help to anticipate global supply chain disruptions and which could be its affections to other nodes of the chain.
- Sustainability: coordinating energy, materials and logistics and being able to know their performance, it could be used to reduce environmental impact.
- Collaborative innovation: it would be very useful to test new product or service scenarios virtually before investing in physical prototypes.
Even if there is still lot of to do previously, the next frontier for digital twins lies not in optimizing isolated machines but in connecting digital twins to model entire ecosystems of value chains.
About Digital Twin project
The Digital Twin on Smart Manufacturing project is a European collaborative initiative that brings together education providers, industry partners, and SMEs from several EU countries. Its goal is to develop innovative training programmes and learning resources that support the adoption of Digital Twin technologies in smart manufacturing, helping bridge the gap between education and industry needs and contributing to the advancement of Industry 4.0 in Europe.
References
International Energy Agency (IEA). Digitalisation and Energy Report . Paris: IEA, 2021. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/digitalisation-and-energy
Plattform Industry 4.0. Asset Administration Shell (AAS) – Standard for Industry 4.0 . 2023. Available at: https://www.plattform-i40.de/
GAIA-X. The GAIA-X Initiative for Europe's Digital Sovereignty . 2023. Available at: https://gaia-x.eu/
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.