Development of the digital twins’ typical architecture in the mechanical engineering enterprise production and logistics systems at different stages of their lifecycle

Abstract

Information technology improvement is changing approaches to managing the product and complex systems life cycle, as well as the methods used in studying the complex processes. Recently, digital twins of objects, processes and systems are being increasingly developed, which involves creation of their virtual copies that could be used to investigate and predict behavior of the object in question. Generalized architecture of digital twins of objects, which include products, processes and systems, is provided. Issues of building digital twins for a mechanical engineering enterprise are outlined. It is shown that it becomes possible to design and develop a multicity of digital twins for various objects of the same mechanical engineering enterprise, each of them would solve its specific problems. The paper considers digital twins of the mechanical engineering enterprise production and logistics system, its typical architecture and digital twin alteration at various stages of its life cycle. It is shown that building digital twins of the production and logistics system at various stages of its life cycle provides support in making organizational and technological decisions in order to increase efficiency of the production and logistics system. Main classes of the information systems used to build digital twins of the production and logistics system at the design and operation stages are described.