Digital Twins and Their Role in Reengineering Engineering Education

The current century is a hotbed of technological advances and transformation, especially the rise of Digital Twins. Digital transformation based on Digital Twins, moving work into the digital world, is occurring at a rapid pace. However, university and college systems have lagged woefully behind in preparing graduates for their jobs in this new environment. The current state of this education is indicated by not adequately preparing graduates for digitally oriented jobs in industry, pushing back at adding new digital technologies in the classroom because there is no room in the curriculum, and requiring courses that do not have relevance for the jobs graduates will have, but are intended to weed students out of engineering programs. The proposal made here is that we need to reengineer engineering curriculums. There needs to be industry involvement in curriculum, integrate math and engineering focusing on the gray box model, directly address the issue of critical thinking and problem solving, and educate not only an engineering but product “illities” -manufacturability and supportability. This means taking a multidisciplinary and integrative approach, moving to a knowledge “T” model versus an “I” model, and finally implementing internships as a core feature of engineering education. This chapter will provide issues of the current system and propose how Digital Twins and digital transformation can help reengineer engineering education.