Digital Twins as Software and Service Development Ecosystems in Industry 4.0: Towards a Research Agenda

Abstract

While research on digital twins of cyber-physical systems within industry 4.0 is emerging, the software development perspective on digital twins remains under-explored. Contemporary definitions and examples of digital twins have covered company- or product-specific solutions or discussed the use of digital twins in rather proprietary value chains. This paper addresses the importance of taking an ecosystem view on software development on digital twins for industry 4.0 and outlines a framework for building a research agenda for such ecosystems. The framework includes three dimensions: scope of the digital twin software platform (internal, value chain, ecosystem), life-cycle phases of the industry 4.0 system related with the digital twin (creation, production, operation & maintenance, disposal), and level of integration between the twin and the physical system (model, shadow, twin). As this research-in-progress addresses examples of research questions in light of the framework, further research to build a full-scale research agenda based on a systematic literature review is suggested.