Federated Interoperable Digital Twins for Collaborative Learning Factories

Globalization has made the production systems accessible across the globe by removing the geographical boundaries. The original equipment manufacturers outsource many of the parts which are not their core competencies to leverage the globalized production for reduced cost. However, the complexity associated with the supply chain and the manufacturing process have increased and have become critical. The modular learning factories designed to understand, develop, and train industry 4.0 based manufacturing solutions should be able to oversee these complexities of globalized or de-centralized production with different quality standards. Digital twins of manufacturing applications mimic the real time working and has the potential to be developed as a platform – Digital twin as a Service – for collaborative learning factories. This paper proposes a federated digital twin based collaborative learning factory framework to develop manufacturing solutions for global scenarios. The network of learning factories provides a globalized field to train and test solutions. The proposed framework is elaborated with a use case on the development of federated digital twins for production, assembly, and inspection systems. The proposed solution is expected to help in improving the productivity and better planning for disruptions in production. The collaborative manufacturing framework can be enhanced by developing digital twins for manufacturing partners in the supply chain.