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PublicationDigital Twins within the Circular Economy: Literature Review and Concept Presentation( 2024-03-26)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.
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PublicationDeveloping Digital Twins for energy efficiency in the production phase of products( 2024)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.
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PublicationSustainable product lifecycle management with Digital Twins: A systematic literature review( 2023-07)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.
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PublicationDigital Twin for Circular Economy( 2023-05)Digital twins offer a promising approach to sustainable value creation by providing a specific data base for the monitoring and execution of circular economy strategies. By analyzing product, component and material as well as process data, it is possible to create transparency throughout a products lifecycle and address current challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity. The concept of a digital twin for circular economy enables to build a data-driven ecosystem and supports new business and value creation models from SMEs to large enterprises. This paper identifies application scenarios, their technological readiness level and challenges of digital twins for circular economy in the manufacturing industry based on a systematic literature review. As a second result, a generic concept of a digital twin for circular economy is presented.
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PublicationEmpowering End-of-Life Vehicle Decision Making with Cross-Company Data Exchange and Data Sovereignty via Catena-X( 2023)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.
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PublicationDimensions of Industrial Openness - Understanding Openness and its Implications for Sustainable Transformation( 2023)
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PublicationAn explorative multiple case study of smart-circular PSS - status quo in industry( 2023)The business as usual is not yet decoupled from current environmentally damaging value creation. This raises the continuous need for new solutions to allow for the operationalization of R-strategies. One specific approach is the establishment of smart-circular Product-Service-Systems considering all three sustainability strategies – efficiency, consistency and sufficiency – in the entire product lifecycle. Within this multiple case study, 30 existing use cases from different industries, which are already interconnected PSS, were analysed in detail using the following criteria: Level of sustainability reporting, B2B or B2C, product focus, sustainable PSS types, classification of smart PSS elements and the realization of R-strategies subdivided into smart and conventional operationalization. Descriptions in the websites, videos and sustainability reports of the respective PSS providers served as the data source for this multiple case study. In addition, to the authors further data collection, using the replication logic of Yin, seven case studies from the scientific literature dealing with the topic of implementation of PSS were an inspiration and some of the use cases have been used for this paper. To validate the above criteria, 30 PSS providers were contacted, 6 of whom responded and confirmed the assessment. The main results were: Findings of the analysed criteria and future research directions.
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PublicationProject-Based Learning in Engineering Education – Developing Digital Twins in a Case Study( 2023)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.
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PublicationDigital Twins for Sustainability in the Context of Biological Transformation( 2023)Applying biological principles that are similar to those found in nature to product engineering and manufacturing offers new approaches to product and production systems and might lead to a significant contribution towards sustainability. By transferring materials, structures, and processes of natural to digital ecosystems industrial value creation can be optimized. A promising approach to establish a networked, self-regulating digital ecosystem represents a digital twin. The potential of digital twins within the context of biological transformation has not been researched yet. This paper attempts to provide a first entry into the research topic by identifying biological principles within the concept of a digital twin and analyzing its potential for biological transformation in the industry. As a main result, the paper presents a list of relevant principles of biological transformation based on a structured taxonomy. These are specified within the concept of a digital twin.
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PublicationTaxonomy for Biological Transformation Principles in the Manufacturing Industry( 2023)Industry and research are seeking answers to current demands in industrial value creation, like resilience of production, sufficient product quality and sustainability of products and processes. A novel line of thought, seeking the accomplishment of those is the Biological Transformation (BT). BT describes the interweaving of biological modes of action, materials and organisms with engineering and information sciences. The conflation of disciplines from natural, technical and social sciences yields in a heterogeneous field of activities with ambiguous technical terms. An ascertainment of principles of BT is required to classify yet undifferentiated patterns in nature-based production, facilitating their systematic implementation in aiming for sustained solutions on current challenges. With increasing research in biomimetic, attempts arise to capture nature‑based activities in manufacturing through schematic classifications. Yet, basic semantics representing the effective principles of BT in the manufacturing industry is lacking. The goal of this publication is to introduce a taxonomy of Biological Transformation in manufacturing based on its core principles Bio Inspiration, Bio Integration and Bio Interaction. Within the research project BioFusion 4.0, the taxonomy was developed and applied to classify technology innovations. The paper presents the taxonomy, its development and application in use cases.
