Challenges in Implementing Digital Twins – a Survey

Despite the undisputed potentials of Digital Twins, they are still lacking application in industry. However, the reasons for this observation are still unclear. Therefore, a survey with 61 industrial professionals was conducted to investigate the most crucial impediments in implementing Digital Twins. The research was guided by four research questions — (1) Is there still ambiguity in the terminology of Digital Twins? (2) What are characteristics of Digital Twin projects in industry? (3) What are the most crucial (categories of) impediments in implementing Digital Twins? and (4) Are non-technical issues more likely to cause problems, than technical issues? First, contextual aspects were collected. They include the background of the participant, the operating fields and size of the company, as well as characteristic information on digitalization projects in general and Digital Twin projects more specifically. Then participants were asked to rate categories of issues as well as very specific impediments with respect to their likelihood to cause problems in the implementation of Digital Twins. The results show that technical issues, like missing standardization of data and models, are still present. However, according to the collected data, non-technical issues, like a lack of expertise and specialists, are more likely to cause difficulties. Based on these results, directions for future development of Digital Twin research, like the need for a business modelling approach for Digital Twins or a teaching concept, are derived.