Digital Twin and Product Lifecycle Management: What Is the Difference?

Part 2: Digital TwinsInternational audienceWith the rapid development of modern information and communication technologies as well as infrastructure, the digital twin approach becomes increasingly popular and widely used throughout the industry and research. The digital twin is considered to be the key technology to realize the comprehensive digital description of components, products and systems including the information from all lifecycle phases. The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy has been present in the industry for many years and is considered as the most effective way of managing the components, products and systems of a company all the way across their lifecycles from the first idea of the product to its disposal. The digital twin is not yet clearly defined. It can be defined as a set of models, linked with each other as well as with the physical product enabling data storage and real-time processing. In contrast to a digital twin the PLM strategy provides a framework, which serves as single source of truth connecting the partial models, that describe the physical product. The models can receive the data stored in a product data management system (PDM).The aim of the present paper is to distinguish the characteristics of the digital twin and PLM as well to find similarities and differences in the both approaches. The current development of both strategies is presented, and the answer to the question, where is the difference between digital twin and PLM is given