Generic Digital Twin Platform Framework for Advanced Service Innovation

Digital twin (DT) is being widely exploited by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for transforming their sole product-centered business models to service-centered ones, but there is a lack of research on what a generic DT platform should look like to support integral product-service system through-life value creations and benefit customers and all other stakeholders along the product lifecycle. To address this research gap, this paper first describes the proposed generic DT platform framework development methods. Then it illustrates the key components, interactions among stakeholders, and the concepts of the generic DT platform. Finally, it discusses platform realization and implementation techniques. The framework has been qualitatively evaluated through two industrial case studies to simulate the digitally enhanced advanced ‘lighting/heating as a service’ scenarios and business applications. It is found that our DT platform can be tailor-made to support all value-creation services from product design research, to product design, manufacturing, and after-sale services along the product lifecycle.