Digital Twins-based Application Development for Digital Manufacturing

Industry 4.0 applications integrate and analyze information from industrial machines, people involved in production, products, and processes to determine how to improve production efficiency, enhance product consistency, and reduce unplanned maintenance in industrial plants. However, Industry 4.0 application development is currently complex and expensive due to the lack of effective representations of complex industrial machines in the cyberspace, and the limited support of IoT platforms in using such representations to monitor, predict, and mange production outcomes. To simplify the complexity and reduce the cost of Industry 4.0 application development, this paper proposes Cyber Twins (CTs), which is a variant of digital twins that is specifically designed for manufacturing, for representing complex industrial machines and providing the building blocks for Industry 4.0 application development. Furthermore, the paper proposes a platform for CT-based Industry 4.0 application development that overcomes the complexity and cost limitations of existing IoT platforms in developing Industry 4.0 applications. The paper provides examples of CTs for industrial machines and Industry 4.0 applications that demonstrate the benefits of CT-based Industry 4.0 application development via the proposed platform.