Digital Shadows: Infrastructuring the Internet of Production

Abstract

AbstractDigitization in the field of production is fragmented in very different domains, ranging from materials to production technology to process and business models. Each domain comes with specialized knowledge, often incorporated into mathematical models. This heterogeneity makes it hard to naively exploit advances in data-driven machine learning that could facilitate situation adaptation and experience transfer. Innovative combinations of model-driven and data-driven solutions must be invented but also made comparable and interoperable to avoid ending up in information silos. In future World Wide Labs (WWLs), experiences can be shared, aggregated, and used for innovation. WWLs will be complex, evolving socio-technical networks of interconnected devices, software, data stores, and humans as users and contributors of expert knowledge and feedback. Integrating a large number of research labs, engineering, and production sites requires a capable cross-domain Internet of Production (IoP) infrastructure. The IoP project claims Digital Shadows (DSs) to offer a shared conceptual foundation for infrastructuring the IoP. In engineering, DSs were introduced as the data provision link to Digital Twins, whereas in computer science, DSs generalize the well-established concept of database views. In this chapter, we elaborate on the roles of DSs in infrastructuring the IoP from three perspectives: analytic functionality, conceptual organization, and technical networking. As an example where an integrative DS-like approach is already highly successful, we showcase the approach and infrastructure of the process mining field.