Digital Twin: Conclusion and Future Trends in Process Plants

The generation of the digital twin for a brownfield process plant can be offered in the market as a service provided in collaboration with a few partners. In this book, we have tackled specific technical and economic issues, benefits, and limitations of a dedicated process to achieve this objective. It is a service with inherent self-improvement, while it facilitates a fast feed-forward of new software solutions, initiated by advances in research, to a daily-used industrial service. In this chapter, we draw the way for the further development of the DigiTwin solution which is either obvious or can be expected. Moreover, we highlight some still open challenges with respect to the digital twin and its associated research (sub)domains in a brief overview. As in the preceding chapters, a consistent taxonomy with a self-explainable set of eight dimensions that can be articulated with a limited number of characteristics is reused for the assessment and positioning of current trends and challenges in digital twins. Four dimensions have been identified with potential for short-term advances: instantiation (reusability) of a digital twin, dealing with different accuracy of singular components, and improved processing of raw data. External impacts due to advances in the scanning process, process modeling, as well as data processing and services, are explored too. A section is dedicated to the synchronization with the piping and instrumentation diagram which is identified as a key improvement for digital twin. In the discussion section, ten main challenges identified in the recent publications are addressed. Apart from the functional improvements, the handling of requirements, traceability, and metrics for the assessment of digitization pose the main challenges. Furthermore, the challenges in architecture, data processing, and automated simulation workflow round up this section. Intellectual property and its protection are highlighted in the context of a collaborative environment. The results show an evolution of digital twin's role from an enabler of cyber-physical systems to a constituent of Asset Lifecycle Management, the central platform for data integration and processing. Finally, the conclusion section emphasizes again the importance of seamless interoperability.