Digital Twin

The digital twin for food production has already been in focus for several years. Nevertheless, practical implementations are hardly available so far. The requirements for the digital twin are very diverse, as shown, for example, at the event "Applied Digitalization" of the “Industrievereinigung für Lebensmitteltechnologie und Verpackung” (Industry Association for Food Technology and Packaging, IVLV) in May 2022. The variants range from a digital process image of the machine to real-time simulation. By far not only process data is relevant, but also data on maintenance and spare parts of machines. Some manufacturers are trying to present suitable solutions here, but there is always a risk of vendor lock-in, i.e., permanent dependence on one supplier. On the other hand, there are several open-source software solutions whose use free of licensing costs is becoming more and more wide-spread in the industry.

Relevant standards include the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), which is well suited for digital twins and is significantly supported by the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA). Such administration shells can be used to connect more widely used interfaces such as OPC UA, but also other layers, e.g., from building automation. Technologically, reference implementations are now available as open-source soft-ware for the development of management shells.

The key criteria for practical deployment are economic factors: "How expensive will it be to implement a digital twin?" and "What economic benefits can I achieve with what kind of applications and business models?"

The primary goal of the current project is to find an answer to the question of implementation costs. To achieve this a practical reference implementation of a digital twin based on existing open-source technologies will be implemented. A special focus lies on the implementation effort of the used basic technologies as well as on the structure of the AAS models. The procedure is to be documented in such a practical way that an implementation can be solved in the future by member companies of the IVLV independently, if they do not want to fall back on an experienced service provider.

In the future, an interoperable data exchange standard can be created in the industry that integrates existing standards (OPC UA incl. Companion Specifications such as WS Food) and goes beyond them or even leads to common open-source libraries, such as those already created by the German logistics industry.