Toward human centric factory based on digital triplet concept

Abstract

Smart and intelligent manufacturing systems based on cyber physical system (CPS) are gaining researchers’ interest in recent years. A Digital twin (DT), which is a virtual representation of a physical object, is widely regarded as a corner stone for the realization of CPS. Although many tools, methods, and guidelines for developing DT has been proposed, DT alone is not sufficient for solving practical problems that occur in an actual production system (e.g., frequent rescheduling caused by unpredictable events such as machine failure or engineering changes). Because DT is merely a digital representation of a physical object, it cannot provide a problem-solving procedure for unpredicted situations alone. Therefore, the integrated utilization of human experts’ knowledge with DT is indispensable for the realization of smart and intelligent manufacturing system. In order to solve the problem, the authors’ group has proposed a Digital triplet (D3) concept, which organizes human engineers’ ‘intelligent activity world’ with DT, and has demonstrated its advantages and potential through multiple case studies. The paper summarizes the findings from the case studies and discusses the future research directions.