Data-Driven Analyses and Digital Twins to Support Lifecycle and Concurrent Engineering: Preliminary Assessment for an Industrial Implementation

This work aims to highlight the state-of-the-art framework for implementing digital twins to support the product-process development. More in detail, the literature re-view is discussed on the base of a precise industrial context offered by a research collaboration active between the authors and ABB S.p.A., Santa Palomba (Pomezia), Italy. With this aim, applications may be distinguished by the level of complexity and related methodologies, tools and hindrances. Thanks to their prior strategic organization, data collection, processing and analytics are sufficiently mature to allow for the development and testing of various artificial intelligence and digital twin related approaches. This study identifies the key technical and methodological constraints for implementing digital twins in industrial environments, providing a foundation for future structured development. A detailed discussion of the major implementation issues is then presented, with a focus on four key areas within the specific industrial context: Process, Quality, Maintenance, and Flows. The analysis highlights both the bottlenecks and the positive aspects that can influence the effectiveness of the next future implementations.