Digital twin: current shifts and their future implications in the conditions of technological disruption

Abstract

We are in the midst of a significant transformation regarding the way we produce products and deliver services thanks to the digitisation of manufacturing and new connected supply-chains and co-creation systems. This article elaborates digital twins approach to the current challenges of knowledge management when Industry 4.0 is emerging in industries and manufacturing. There are not very many studies, which have elaborated on this important question from a knowledge management perspective. This article summarised this ongoing discussion. We observe three major shifts ongoing with digital twins: first, there is a drive towards the added complexity of the environments modelled by digital twins. Secondly, the paradigm offers a general shift from analysing ex-post data to predicting the future. Third, in the future, digital twin can move from cyber-physical integration of physical and virtual entities towards cyber-physical integration of larger interconnected networks presenting a new digital twin interaction-puzzle. The identification of these shifts and their implications is a new addition to the scientific literature in the field. The article presents five scenarios of technological disruption based on Clayton M. Christensen’s model. This is a novel extension of Clayton M. Christensen’s original idea and model