TY - GEN
T1 - Lightweight digital twin as a service (LDTaaS): a cost-efficient digital transformation approach for manufacturing SMEs
AU - Guo, Daqiang
AU - Zhang, Tongda
AU - Rong, Yiming
AU - Huang, George Q.
AU - Srai, Jagjit Singh
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IET Conference Proceedings. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - The advent of Industry 4.0 has brought about a transformative digital revolution in the manufacturing sector. However, when compared to high-tech giants or large corporations, manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are notably falling behind in embracing this transition. Although manufacturing SMEs recognize the need to embrace this exciting industrial revolution to stay competitive, boost productivity, and fulfil customer expectations, they strive to balance the benefits of adopting new technologies with various obstacles, such as limited finances and expertise resources, outdated legacy systems and infrastructure, low level of digital skills, as well as scalability and flexibility issues. To address the dilemma faced by SM manufacturers in digital transformation, this paper introduces the concept of lightweight digital twin as a service (LDTaaS), which refers to the provision of lightweight digital twins (LDTs) as cloud-based services using a subscription-based model, aiming to provide a cost-effective and scalable digital transformation approach for SM manufacturers. Moreover, a reference architecture for LDTaaS is proposed, emphasizing modularity, interoperability, and synchronization, to facilitate the development and delivery of modular, scalable, and interoperable digital twin services. By providing digital twin perception, interaction, cognition, and application capabilities as a service on a subscription basis, LDTaaS offers a cost-effective and scalable approach for SM manufacturers to embark on their digital transformation journeys. The proposed concept and approach are validated with a cluster of footwear manufacturing SMEs, with increases of the annual total profit, improvement of inventory turnover ratio, enhancement of on-time delivery, reductions of operational errors and rework times. This study offers insights into cost-effective digital transformation solutions enabled by digital twins for manufacturing SMEs.
AB - The advent of Industry 4.0 has brought about a transformative digital revolution in the manufacturing sector. However, when compared to high-tech giants or large corporations, manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are notably falling behind in embracing this transition. Although manufacturing SMEs recognize the need to embrace this exciting industrial revolution to stay competitive, boost productivity, and fulfil customer expectations, they strive to balance the benefits of adopting new technologies with various obstacles, such as limited finances and expertise resources, outdated legacy systems and infrastructure, low level of digital skills, as well as scalability and flexibility issues. To address the dilemma faced by SM manufacturers in digital transformation, this paper introduces the concept of lightweight digital twin as a service (LDTaaS), which refers to the provision of lightweight digital twins (LDTs) as cloud-based services using a subscription-based model, aiming to provide a cost-effective and scalable digital transformation approach for SM manufacturers. Moreover, a reference architecture for LDTaaS is proposed, emphasizing modularity, interoperability, and synchronization, to facilitate the development and delivery of modular, scalable, and interoperable digital twin services. By providing digital twin perception, interaction, cognition, and application capabilities as a service on a subscription basis, LDTaaS offers a cost-effective and scalable approach for SM manufacturers to embark on their digital transformation journeys. The proposed concept and approach are validated with a cluster of footwear manufacturing SMEs, with increases of the annual total profit, improvement of inventory turnover ratio, enhancement of on-time delivery, reductions of operational errors and rework times. This study offers insights into cost-effective digital transformation solutions enabled by digital twins for manufacturing SMEs.
KW - cloud services
KW - digitalization
KW - Industry 4.0
KW - interoperability
KW - modularity
KW - synchronization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178618599&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1049/icp.2023.1731
DO - 10.1049/icp.2023.1731
M3 - Conference article published in proceeding or book
AN - SCOPUS:85178618599
SN - 978-1-83953-932-9
VL - 2023
T3 - IET Conference Proceedings
SP - e-copy
BT - Low-Cost Digital Solutions for Industrial Automation (LoDiSA 2023)
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2023 Low-Cost Digital Solutions for Industrial Automation, LoDiSA 2023
Y2 - 25 September 2023 through 26 September 2023
ER -