Enterprise Digital Twin: An Approach to Construct Digital Twin for Complex Enterprises

Background

The core concept of digital twin of enterprises is traced back to Information Mirroring Model published in 2005 (Grieves, 2005). This primitive model is refined multiple times to support complex systems and termed as digital twin in Virtually Perfect: Driving Innovative and Lean Products through Product Lifecycle Management (Grieves 2011). Over the years, the efficacy of the digital twin are demonstrated using various state-of-the-art modelling paradigms, simulation technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), sensor technologies and a wide range of data analytics techniques. The utility of a digital twin is established in several engineering disciplines. For example, the concept has been widely adopted in several astronautics and aerospace researches since NASA has included it in their technology roadmap (Glaessgen and Stargel, 2012).

Conceptually such digital twin is formed using three core elements: (i) real environment, (ii) virtual environment and (iii) connection between two environments as shown in Figure 1. The real environment is an actual enterprise, system, product or process. The virtual environment is a faithful representation of the real environment. A virtual environment is typically formed for a range of in-silico interrogative and/or predictive analysis, where the key objectives are: (a) understand current system in precise form, (b) analyse the efficacy of hypothetical changes or adaptation strategies to realise specific goals of a real environment, and (c) explore design alternatives of a new environment.