Digital twinning as the basis for integration of education and research in a learning factory

Abstract

Learning factories that focus solely on education may benefit from replicating software systems that drive processes, activities, and workflows in industrial environments. However, such systems (e.g., PLM, ERP or MES) will not meet the requirements if the learning factory intends to be an environment where education and research merge. The flexibility, volatility, ambiguity and incertitudes that characterise the integrated learning-research environment need to be addressed with an approach that replicates industrial reality, but that also accommodates and stimulates the versatility of the learning factory. This paper depicts how the digital twinning approach integrates the physical units of a learning factory and the software systems, but also data acquisition, simulation, and educational/didactic approaches to production/assembly processes and production optimalisation. The approach thus also includes, for example, IoT, planning, monitoring, diagnosis and (quality) control. In addition, the digital twinning approach is used to combine the current state of the learning factory and its activities with designed (to-be) and potential (could-be) representations of the environment in order to stimulate the evolution/improvement of both research and education and their combination. For this purpose, digital twinning is combined with the concept of daydreaming. The paper illustrates the approach based on an ongoing development trajectory of a new learning factory, in setting it up as an environment for education and simultaneously as a testbed for research. It discusses how the development process relies on the digital twinning approach and how, when the learning factory is commissioned, this digital twinning approach will increasingly integrate the use of and activities in the learning factory into the development/evolution cycle of that learning factory.