Decision support based on digital twin simulation: a case study

The significance of Digital Twins is considered vital in the reshaping of the manufacturing field with the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution. The potential of applying the Digital Twin technology is being studied extensively as a key enabler of engineering cyber-physical systems. However, it is still in its infancy, and only a few scientific papers are describing its applicability in case-studies, prototypes or industrial systems. Bearing this in mind, this paper presents a comprehensive overview of Digital Twins in the manufacturing domain and defines a conceptual architecture that considers simulation capabilities to support the optimisation of production processes. The designed approach is applied to a proof-of-concept case study that considers a flexible production cell and uses the simulation of the system to dynamically support decision making to optimise the production processes when changes occur in the real production system.