Three Carriages Driving the Development of Intelligent Digital Twins-Simulation Plus Optimization and Learning

Three key technologies are driving the development of intelligent decisions in the era of Industry 4.0. These technologies are machine learning, optimization, and simulation. It shows that solely relying on one technology is not able to meet the decision timeliness and accuracy requirement when solving current industry decision problems. Thus, to meet this challenge, this paper firstly discusses several possible integrations among the three technologies, in which simulation plays an important role in depicting the system models, generating data for optimization and learning, and validating optimized decisions and learned rules. A number of future research directions are pointed out based on the gap between the current technology / tools development and the industry needs. Finally, the paper proposes a possible collaboration mode among higher learning institutes, research institutes, equipment and platform developers, as well as end-users for better shaping the whole intelligent decision ecosystem.