Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik IPK

Filters
Reset filters

Settings
Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Digital Twins within the Circular Economy: Literature Review and Concept Presentation

2024-03-26 , Mügge, Janine , Seegrün, Anne , Hoyer, Tessa-Katharina , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Lindow, Kai

Digital twins offer a promising approach to sustainable value creation by providing specific life cycle data and enabling the monitoring and implementation of circular economy strategies throughout the product’s life cycle. By analyzing product, component, and material data, as well as process data, it is possible to create transparency throughout a product’s life cycle, build a data-driven product ecosystem, and establish new business and value creation models, from SMEs to large enterprises. This paper identifies application scenarios, their technological readiness level, and the challenges of digital twins for the circular economy in the manufacturing industry based on a systematic literature review. Gaps such as ensuring a continuous flow of information and taking into account the different levels of digitalization of companies are identified. As a main result, a holistic concept for the scoping of a digital twin for the circular economy is presented. One specific use case for end-of-life decision-making is elaborated upon. It is shown that the circular economy can be supported by digital twin data, especially for the optimal decision on end-of-life vehicles.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Empowering End-of-Life Vehicle Decision Making with Cross-Company Data Exchange and Data Sovereignty via Catena-X

2023 , Mügge, Janine , Große Erdmann, Julian , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Manoury, Marvin Michael , Smolka, Sophie Odette , Wichmann, Sabine , Lindow, Kai

The mobility sector is the world’s second-largest producer of energy-related CO2 emissions, and it is facing a global resource shortage. The demand for circular products, the use of secondary materials in future vehicles, and the need for sustainable business models in the mobility sector is increasing. However, a transparent and end-to-end data exchange throughout the entire value network is missing, which is hindering an efficient circular economy. Relevant information on the vehicle, its components, and materials at the end of the product life cycle are often missing. In this context, this paper presents a decision support system based on Digital Twin data for a circular economy solution as a software application. It was developed within the German research project Catena-X following an integrated approach of user-centered design, the V-model, and within the Scaled Agile Framework. By combining these methodological approaches, customer-oriented solutions were developed and continuously improved at each stage of development to shorten the time-to-market. Catena-X is based on Gaia-X principles. In Gaia-X, necessary core services are developed, and contraction negotiation for data exchange and usage policies is enabled and implemented. The decision support system provides important information about the exact composition and condition of the vehicle, its components, and its materials. Thus, it helps to improve efficiency, sustainability, and the implementation of the circular economy. The decision support system was tested and validated with a use case that provided Digital Twin data on the end-of-life vehicle.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

End-of-life decision support to enable circular economy in the automotive industry based on digital twin data

2023 , Mügge, Janine , Hahn, Inka Rebekka , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Chatzis, Johannes , Boes, Joachim

With the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Developments Goals, the vision of a greenhouse gas-neutral and resource-efficient economy is already firmly anchored in world politics. In this context, the automotive industry faces many challenges including the increasing scarcity of natural resources, a rising demand in terms of sustainable vehicle design, production and materials sourcing. Due to all this, end-of-life decisions regarding dismantling have become increasingly important. A high proportion of secondary materials will be required in the vehicles of the future. To response to these challenges, companies have turned their focus towards the circular economy as a central approach to close material loops. In the German research project “Catena-X” a new data ecosystem with digital twins is one enabler that is being developed. The digital twins represent a promising approach to the circular economy by ensuring transparent, product-specific and end-to-end data exchange throughout the entire product lifecycle, from the material sourcing to the eventual dismantling and recycling. As one particular and unique solution, a decision framework that facilitates the best circular strategy at the end of a vehicle's life is developed and presented in this paper. The underlying data-driven decision support framework is based on circular economy KPIs. This includes material, components and specific vehicle KPIs to best identify the most suitable circular strategy. The framework was methodologically developed by an interdisciplinary team of partners, who are stakeholders throughout the value chain and participants in the Catena-X project. An integrated approach of user-centered design, an adapted version of the V-model and the Scaled Agile Framework were used for the methodology in the development of the solution. The paper presents the concept of a digital twin for a decision support system, that includes a central decision logic that also includes the relevant KPIs and a survey for evaluating the decision logic utilised with a chosen dismantling company.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Enabling automated engineering's project progress measurement by using data flow models and digital twins

2021 , Ebel, Helena , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Stark, Rainer

A significant challenge of managing successful engineering projects is to know their status at any time. This paper describes a concept of automated project progress measurement based on data flow models, digital twins, and machine learning (ML) algorithms. The approach integrates information from previous projects by considering historical data using ML algorithms and current unfinished artifacts to determine the degree of completion. The information required to measure the progress of engineering activities is extracted from engineering artifacts and subsequently analyzed and interpreted according to the project's progress. Data flow models of the engineering process help understand the context of the analyzed artifacts. The use of digital twins makes it possible to connect plan data with actual data during the completion of the engineering project.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Developing Digital Twins for energy efficiency in the production phase of products

2024 , Wehking, Sebastian , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Tanrikulu, Cansu , Lindow, Kai

The relevance of digital solutions to enable sustainable value creation, the monitoring and ultimately the reduction of the environmental footprint has increased. New information technologies and increased data availability along a product's lifecycle offer more tools to assess product sustainability than ever before. This paper presents how a Digital Twin needs to be designed to help monitor product-level energy efficiency and how such a Digital Twin can be implemented. State-of-the-art research on Digital Twins and their development, lifecycle assessment, and energy efficiency are introduced. There is a lack of evaluated implementations of methodical DT development in different scenarios, especially for the evaluation of product-level energy efficiency during production. Results of a research project with the focus on the development and implementation of Digital Twins are presented. The use case is set within the scenario of the sequential development of a product simultaneously with the development of the Digital Twin. The focus is put on the implementation of an energy consumption prediction and product carbon footprint analytics module as part of the Digital Twin. The development approach is presented and recommendations for the development of future Digital Twins are derived.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Dimensions of Industrial Openness - Understanding Openness and its Implications for Sustainable Transformation

2023 , Weiher, Nils , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Lindow, Kai

The topic of Openness is of growing importance for industry, especially in Europe. However, the term Openness is used very differently. Openness includes several concepts, including Open Source Hardware, Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Standards, Open Innovation, Open Science and Open Education. The concepts address different dimensions of Openness, all based on some kind of participation and with the goal to create more transparency and accessibility. This article defines the concepts and provides a basic understanding of their importance for industry and for greater sustainability.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Digital Twins for Circular Economy - Enabling Decision Support for R-Strategies

2022 , Mügge, Janine , Hahn, Inka Rebekka , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Chatzis, Johannes

Als Teil des digitalen Datenökosystems bieten Digitale Zwillinge (DT) für die Kreislaufwirtschaft (CE) einen vielversprechenden Ansatz für eine nachhaltigere Wertschöpfung. Durch die Analyse und Aufbereitung von produkt-, bauteil- und materialspezifischen Daten entlang des Lebenszyklus ist es möglich, aktuelle Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel und Ressourcenknappheit zu adressieren. Im deutschen Forschungsprojekt Catena-X werden auf Basis dieser unternehmensübergreifend ausgetauschten Daten und Informationen konkrete Lösungen entwickelt. In diesem Rahmen wird der „R-Strategie Assistent" vorgestellt. Dabei handelt es sich um eine Anwendung, die auf Basis von DT-Daten die beste CE-Strategie am Ende des Lebenszyklus eines Fahrzeugs ermittelt.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Sustainable product lifecycle management with Digital Twins: A systematic literature review

2023-07 , Seegrün, Anne , Kruschke, Thomas , Mügge, Janine , Hardinghaus, Louis , Knauf, Tobias , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Lindow, Kai

A Digital Twin (DT) is a virtual replica of a product or product-service system, which can be used to provide transparency of a product's sustainability and to positively influence the ecological impact throughout its lifecycle by means of intelligent data analytics. This paper identifies current sustainability-focused application scenarios of DTs in the manufacturing industry and outlines the results of a systematic literature review (SLR). The identification of the state-of-the-art and the assessment of current DT concepts with regard to the addressed product lifecycle phases, technological maturity and sustainability scope point towards key directions to guide future research.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Project-Based Learning in Engineering Education – Developing Digital Twins in a Case Study

2023 , Hagedorn, Lisa , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Stark, Rainer

The current engineering environment demands for an increasing level of interdisciplinarity, innovation, creativity and cross-domain thinking as well as the consideration of sustainability aspects. New concepts, such as Digital Twins and complex product systems lead to the need for integrated product development approaches and new methods that put the user perspective in focus. This also needs to be an integral part in today's teaching concepts of the next generation of engineers.At the Department of Industrial Information Technology of the Technical University of Berlin, a case study was conducted by applying a concept of project-based learning in the engineering domain to address these challenges. In this paper, the case study as well as the method and its validation are presented. Students from different engineering disciplines had the task of developing virtual and physical prototypes for a sustainable, complex product system with a digital twin and respective sustainable business models. Within a structured survey, the teaching concept and the applied method were validated and lessons learned as well as further improvement measures are derived.

View
No Thumbnail Available
Publication

Biological Transformation in process simulation for enhancing ecological sustainability indicators

2022 , König, Valentina , Berkhahn, Magda , Riedelsheimer, Theresa , Plakhotnik, Denys , Stautner, Marc

Achieving a sustainable value creation with innovative technological means based on principles of living nature is the goal of Biological Transformation (BT). The three essential principles of BT: Bio-Inspiration, Bio-Integration and Bio-Interaction, enable the implementation of biologically transformed materials, structures and processes. BT is an emerging concept in the field of Industrie 4.0, taking a particular emphasis on product creation, but its specific influence and the potential for process planning in manufacturing are still underrepresented in research. Regarding the BT of the manufacturing industry, the goal in process planning is to support the user towards the most sustainable processes. Due to the current lack of profound systematical approaches process planning strongly depends on the user's level of knowledge of conventional manufacturing processes, which can be inefficient in terms of environmental sustainability. Therefore, this paper methodically investigates the potential for process planning using a taxonomy of principles for the BT of the manufacturing industry. These categorized modes of action for a BT are linked to key performance indicators within the economic and environmental sphere. As a result, expedient approaches for a biologically transformed process planning are uncovered, which address the principles of adaptation, self-adaption and bio-intelligent process engineering to affect the energy consumption, machining time and process stability. Furthermore, first concept ideas for an integrated solution are presented and a basic validation is provided.

View