Production in the loop - the interoperability of digital twins of the product and the production system

The Internet of Things (IoT) era facilitates new possibilities at the interface between the lifecycle of the product and the manufacturing disciplines allowing to add value and meet growing legal requirements. This work presents use cases from the automobile industry which are analyzed in order to derive requirements for data exchange. The analysis of the use cases shows clearly that we need to focus on the instance level for this purpose. This means that both, a specific unit of the product and the production system, must be considered. As a solution approach, a communication loop is proposed bringing the Digital Twin concept in a new field of usage. The key aspect of the proposed solution is the direct intercommunication between the Digital Twins of the product being produced as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) and the production resources as Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS). This solution enables the aggregation of production-related data within the products Digital Twin and therefore promotes maximal transparency throughout engineering disciplines, phases of the product lifecycle and the whole supply chain.