Abstract
In the Industry 4.0 era, digital tools applied to production and manufacturing activities represent a challenge for companies. Digital Twin (DT) technology is based on the integration of different “traditional” tools, such as simulation modeling and sensors, and is aimed at increasing process performance. In DTs, simulation modeling allows for the building of a digital copy of real processes, which is dynamically updated through data derived from smart objects based on sensor technologies. The use of DT within manufacturing activities is constantly increasing, as DTs are being applied in different areas, from the design phase to the operational ones. This study aims to analyze existing fields of applications of DTs for supporting safety management processes in order to evaluate the current state of the art. A bibliometric review was carried out through VOSviewer to evaluate studies and applications of DTs in the engineering and computer science areas and to identify research clusters and future trends. Next, a bibliometric and systematic review was carried out to deepen the relation between the DT approach and safety issues. The findings highlight that in recent years, DT applications have been tested and developed to support operators during normal and emergency conditions and to enhance their abilities to control safety levels.
Highlights
The fourth industrial revolution— known as the Industry 4.0 paradigm—is changing current industrial production systems
Industry 4.0 entails the networking of data coming from machines, products, and people; in general, this involves the interconnection of smart devices among different plants and factories [5] through tools and embedded components, such as cyber–physical systems (CPSs), Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, robotics, systems based on artificial intelligence, and cognitive computation [4]
Even if there are more conference papers than journal articles in absolute terms, in the last three years (2018–2020), the share of journal articles over the total published documents regarding Digital Twin (DT) has increased noticeably, going from 24% to 35%, registering an opposite trend compared to conference papers, which fell from 67% to 52%
Summary
The fourth industrial revolution— known as the Industry 4.0 paradigm—is changing current industrial production systems. From the first definition, this one referred explicitly to the concept of simulation modeling, which is often adopted in several tools for supporting the design, validation, and testing of a system. Within this definition, the simulation is considered as a multi-physics model, as more than one physical field is simultaneously involved and different physical properties are integrated; simulation modeling is usually multi-scale because different levels of time and/or space are used; it is probabilistic because it could be developed with probability calculations
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