A Digital Twin Framework for Industry 4.0 Enabling Next-Gen Manufacturing

Abstract

Digital twins offer a framework to support the ever-rising demands in the fast-paced industrial evolution. This technology not only adds to the reliability of industrial processes but also offers an insight in to long-term behaviors and pattern during the aging of the industrial equipment. In this paper, a digital twin framework is presented to replicate the processes of a real production line for product assembly. The proposed work implements a digital/graphical replica of Festo Cyber Physical Factory (CPF) for Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The implemented system allows to schedule orders and specify product configuration which embodies the actions of CPF in digital world. In addition, the paper also presents a viable framework to interlink the physical system with the digital instance to offer extended services and a pathway towards realization of fully functional digital twins.