Product Lifecycle Information Management with Digital Twin: A Case Study

Abstract

The use of new-generation information technologies in industry and manufacturing is increasing rapidly. However, although information about products is generated and consumed during their entire lifecycle, current research on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tends to focus mainly on the physical products themselves rather than on the related information. The Digital Twin (DT) concept aims to connect the physical world with the virtual one by making all the information about physical objects accessible from a single place, even though that information might be distributed over many information systems. This paper presents and analyses new Product Lifecycle Information Management (PLIM) with DT for managing the lifecycle of smart products in the IoT environment. A real-world use case that is a recently finished main building of the Aalto University campus is presented to demonstrate the proposed approach.