A generic framework for qualifications of digital twins in maintenance

Digital twins have emerged as a promising technology for maintenance applications, enabling organizations to simulate and monitor physical assets to improve their performance. In Operation and Maintenance (O&M), digital twin facilitates the diagnosis and prognosis of critical assets, forming the basis for smart maintenance planning and reducing downtime. However, there is a lack of standardized approaches for the qualifications of digital twins in maintenance, leading to low trustworthiness and limiting its application. This paper proposes a novel framework for the qualifications of digital twins in maintenance based on five pillars, namely fidelity, smartness, timeliness, integration, and standard compliance. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework through two case studies, showing how it can be implemented on digital twins for preventive maintenance and condition-based maintenance. Our proposed framework can help organizations across different industrial domains develop and implement digital twins in maintenance more effectively and efficiently, leading to significant benefits in terms of cost reduction, performance improvement, and sustainability.