Digital Behavior Twins

Data-centric and model-centric development and operational support

Planning, design and operational support, as well as the evaluation of new added value, such as that which can arise when digitally monitoring a vehicle fleet, are complex matters. This is particularly true if the monitoring is also intended to continuously improve the vehicles’ quality and production processes or if predictive maintenance technologies are introduced. Moreover, due to the lack of standard architectures, these approaches are currently limited to bilateral activities and static approaches for dedicated analysis problems. Here, a continuous digital mapping may bring about a significant change.

Behavioural product models, based on a structured and consistent architecture of reusable and standard functional components and applied in a common ecosystem such as Catena-X, permit a wide range of new business concepts and digital services. Consequently, the central scope of consideration for the “Data-centric and model-centric development and operational support” use case is the concept of the “digital twin” for the integrated mapping of products with their functions, properties and key business figures via a common data model. In addition, existing (statistical) black-box models are also used for the behaviour modelled. This way, the prerequisites for flexible applications of digital behaviour twins and their extension to future use cases are met in different scenarios.

A structured architecture of reusable and common functional modules provides a simple entry approach to the delivery of digital behaviour twins and an approach that is very scalable. The consideration of the entire life cycle of products and individual parts offers a holistic methodology that is unique in the industry. Further aspects are:

• Catena-X allows model-based product design and – at the same time – new forms of collaboration between the companies involved.
• The use of digital behaviour twins permits the seamless integration of each product and all its sub-components along the entire value chain.
• Combined with Catena-X’s marketplace, it enables the monetisation of data and models, which motivates partners to offer digital behaviour twins on the network.
• The provision of models and a runtime environment allows – above all – small and medium-sized enterprises to access solutions and evaluation procedures.