Digital twin architecture for assembly line performance monitoring

The forthcoming industrial requirements to ensure increasingly flexible and agile production processes will require an ever-increasing ability to recognise, predict and optimise the state of processes with respect to the planned state. Advanced tools such as Digital Twins (DT) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) can help manage and address these problems. This paper presents some results of the authors’ research on the adoption of a basic methodology for the design and implementation of Digital Twins aimed at manufacturing applications and subsequent integration into a Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPS). Reference publications were selected based on the level of detail of DT and CPS architectures. The aim is also to combine methodological development with industrial tools and requirements. The architecture is potentially applicable to different production scenarios. Finally, the first results of application on a scale production line are shown.