Abstract
The application of digital twins provides value creation within the fields of operations and service management; existing research around decision-making and value co-creation is limited at this point. Prior studies have provided insights into the benefits of digital twins that combined both data and simulation approaches; however, there remains a managerial gap. The purpose of this paper is to explore this research gap using input from a multiple case study research design from both manufacturing environments and non-manufacturing environments. The authors use ten cases to explore how digital twins support value co-creation through decision-making. The authors were all involved in the development of the ten cases. Individual biases were removed by using the literature to provide the assessment dimensions and allowing a convergence of the results. Drawing on the lessons from the ten cases, this study empirically identified eight managerial issues that need to be considered when developing digital twins to support multi-stakeholder decision-making that leads to value co-creation. The application of digital twins in value co-creation and decision-making is a topic that has developed from practice and is an area where a research gap exists between theory and practice. A cross-case analysis was developed based on the literature and the ten cases (eight industrial and two pilot-scale cases) providing the empirical findings. The findings describe how firms can design, develop, and commercialize digital-twin-enabled value propositions and will initiate future research.
Highlights
We explored how digital twin technologies can enhance value co-creation according to S-D logic through 10 different use cases
These were from different industries and different life cycle phases of the assets, which gave a degree of robustness to the findings
The cases are all from the early development of the digital twin services, and the value creation may well be overstated, as it cannot be confirmed at this point in time
Summary
The motivation for this paper is to explore how digital twins can provide new opportunities for value co-creation by supporting decision-making. Prior studies [1,2] have provided insights into the benefits of digital twins that combined both data and simulation approaches, there remaines a gap in our understanding of value creation in such sitations. Value propositions predicated on digital twins present new opportunities for the co-creation of value-within systems and currently there is a limited understanding of the details of the value creation process. The digital twin is defined as: “a dynamic virtual representation of a physical object or system across its lifecycle, using real-time data to enable understanding, learning and reasoning” [3]. Kunath and Winkler [5] stated that a digital twin simulation allows the exploration and evaluation of decisions and consequences. Sala et al [6] state that simulations are a commonly used decision support tool used in many situations within product-service-systems (PSS)
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