Next Generation Digital Twin: an Ecosystem for Mechatronic Systems?

Abstract The Digital Twin is considered as one of the key technology trends and attracts high attention in academic and application-specific publications. Besides the general understanding of the Digital Twin as a digital replica of a physical asset, many different perspectives and conceptions exist. In this paper, we will give an overview of different viewpoints of the Digital Twin and its related aspects. Furthermore, we describe a technological vision of a next generation Digital Twin and its application in the field of mechatronics systems. Motivated from a technical- and simulation-influenced perspective, we look at the economic aspects of the Digital Twin and give an answer to the question if the next generation Digital Twin will form an ecosystem. Based on an exemplary lemonade production, a system of mechatronic systems, we show the main principles of our technical vision: a network of digital artefacts empowered by semantic technologies, the transfer of models between partners in the value chain and along the lifecycle as well as the use of models to generate new services - especially in the operation and service phase - like a Digital Plant Companion.