Design of a Digital Twin to Optimize a Company’s Performance
Résumé
The constant development of industry has led to the fourth industrial revolution. This revolution has organized production processes induced by innovations linked to the Internet of Things and digital technologies. New technologies such as advanced robotics, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence and digital twins have been successfully used in large companies. But their integration in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) requires demonstrating their real impact on the SME performance. This paper focuses on the development of the digital twin as a tool to increase the company performance. Indeed, for SMEs, the virtual replication of the manufacturing system serves as a decision aided system and contributes to test scenarios of improvement before investing in new technologies. This paper presents concepts and methodologies to exploit in the elaboration of the digital twin to optimize manufacturing processes of SMEs. All real time generated data are managed in the optimization process and sensors or connected objects contribute to data acquisition. Optimization models and artificial intelligence techniques are used to define the actual manufacturing organization, to analyze it and to elaborate the adapted scenarios in the virtual world. An example of the digital twin development has been presented.