Digital Twins in the Industry: Maturity, Functions, Effects

A digital twin is one of the most important technological concepts within Industry 4.0. The term is often used in current research and practice on industrial transformation. The article determines the place of a digital twin, highlights its most important characteristics, the technologies used, and evaluates the possibilities of application and effects for the industry. In the author’s opinion, it is important to assess the twin maturity, which allows separating this concept from the means of industrial automation. The complexity studying this object predetermines the need to use the methodology of collecting fragmented data, systematization of scientists’ opinions, and analysis of practical experience. The author identified definitions of the digital twin concept and formulated the necessary features of a digital twin, including a virtual multidisciplinary model of the object, automatic and bi-directional data exchange, and intelligent control capabilities. Maturity criteria were proposed for classifying digital twins; the key digital technologies were distributed on a maturity scale. In terms of the use of a digital twin in industry, the author proposed the structure of the main economic effects in improving the quality of business processes, creating a product, and implementing industrial innovation. An important area of further research is to analyze the economic security of the use of digital twins and data, as well as address the problem of information overload.