Vertically-Integrated Digital Twins for Rapid Adaptation of Manufacturing Value Chains

The rapid changes in social, political and economic policies in today’s European landscape create an increasingly turbulent and demanding market. In response to disruptive internal and external factors, the manufacturing industry strives to establish integrated, intelligent and digital solutions, targeting sustainable, reconfigurable and resilient systems capable of swiftly ramping up to maximum production capacity, enabling rapid adaptations in product functionality, process technology and production volume. In this context, Digital Twins (DTs) are means to map complex manufacturing systems and process chains for fast and efficient reconfiguration of production lines and entire value chains. This paper proposes a holistic architecture for digital twins spanning various hierarchical levels: (i) product level, (ii) process level, (iii) system level, and (iv) system of systems level. The benefits and challenges of the proposed approach are discussed in a real case study from automotive industry.