Mastering the Future of Production: A Training Concept for Digital Twins

As products and their requirements are becoming more individualized and complex, and product cycles are getting shorter, new challenges arise for production. Development, planning, production, and logistics processes are becoming more dynamic and must be managed in a shorter time with an ever-increasing volume of data. Simulation is an established supporting tool, especially in production environments where discrete event simulation is used, laying the foundation for efficient testing, analysis, and optimization. Digital Twins, in particular, can support these processes in an entire production system, from building the factory to the end of production. The growing number of applications of digital twins in production leads to the need for trained employees within companies to implement, maintain, and use the newly revealed opportunities. Hence, various competencies like data acquisition, preparation, and processing are required. A training concept has been developed and is presented in this article to quickly convey how digital twins are built and how they can enhance production facilities. The concept includes the most important theoretical background knowledge, a guided tutorial on implementing Digital Twins, and a hands-on experience of the benefits in a learning factory. As a result, a training course has been created that will help professionals in the future to keep up with the rising number of digital twin applications.