Digital twin design for real-time monitoring – a case study of die cutting machine

Abstract

Digital twin (DT) is a core technology that enables the integration among physical machines, tools, material handling and warehousing, and real-time manufacturing decisions. In this study, a DT framework is proposed for the real-time monitoring of conventional machines to connect isolated machines to an interconnected system and monitor machine conditions in real-time. We implement a DT for a die cutting machine. A dashboard-based mission centre is created to display the real-time condition of the machine. The mission centre is composed of three main functions: real-time machine monitoring, overall equipment effectiveness, and order scheduling. Compared with existing approaches with a barrier of high investment and/or high design complexity, this study proposes an economic DT framework composed of conventional machine structure but has a tolerable level of industrial Internet of things capability.