Integrating Views of Digital Twins in the Strategic Planning of Cyber-Physical Products

Abstract: The digital twin is the virtual representation of the real product and provides the basis for cyber-physical products. Information about states as well as commands are stored in the digital twin. A multitude and variety of stakeholders can retrieve the states and execute the commands. Howev-er, the digital twin is not made available to these stakeholders in its entirety, but rather application- and user-specific rights are distributed to them. These application- and user-specific rights are un-derstood to be the views of digital twins. Taking these views into account in the early stages of product development has the potential to reduce costs, open up new markets and adapt end products to individual customer requirements with less effort. The concept developed in this paper integrates the views of digital twins into the early stages of development of cyber-physical products. A model for strategic product planning is implemented that fully takes into account the criteria of Industry 4.0 and the views of digital twins. In this phase of the product life cycle, the views of digital twins are defined and integrated. A newly developed persona model can be used to analyze and formalize both users, in this case stakeholders, and ap-plications, in this case smart services. The stakeholder model considers both the assignment of a group and a role, as well as the identification of tasks, problems and benefits, and PESTEL influenc-ing factors. The smart service model addresses on the one hand the tasks, problems and benefits of the stakeholders; on the other hand, states and commands can be recorded as well as hardware, software and infrastructure can be analyzed. A comparison of these two models with each other promises an optimal fit. It is thus possible to fulfill customer-specific wishes. The developed concept is validated with the help of a practical use case. In particular, the integra-tion of the views of digital twins is investigated. As a result of the investigation, the applicability and viability of the concept are demonstrated on the basis of a vacuum cleaning robot. In the outlook, future research potentials are identified and possible new solution approaches are presented.

Keywords: Digital Twin, Strategic Planning, Cyber, Physical Products

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003306

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