Leveraging digital twin into dynamic production scheduling: A review

The digital twin is an emerging technology that enhances industrial digitalization, as it establishes a dynamic virtual model that emulates a specific phenomenon of the corresponding physical system, thus imparting added value in many manufacturing activities. Production scheduling is one of the manufacturing activities that can fulfill step-improvements from the digital twin. However, modest endeavors and discussions have been achieved in the application of the digital twin in production scheduling. To alleviate the scarcity of discussions on this topic, this paper provides a systematic review of the integration of the digital twin and dynamic production scheduling. First, this paper presents a summary of works related to digital twin-driven production scheduling. Subsequently, the paper investigates how to leverage the digital twin into production scheduling to improve its real-time capability, performance, and robustness within smart manufacturing systems such as sustainable manufacturing, zero-defect manufacturing, and human-centric manufacturing paradigms. Emphasis will then be placed on identifying research opportunities that need further investigation. Additionally, the paper discusses some manufacturing technologies that can be used in tandem to establish a shop floor digital twin encompassing both manufacturing assets and human resources. Finally, a conceptual digital twin framework is proposed to underpin future research.