About Digital Twins

Some hosts showed digital twins during the Van of Nerds tour de France last September, but none mentioned the cyber-physical systems touted as a key component in Industry 4.0. Furthermore, we also found that the meaning of digital twin had drifted away from detailed simulations of physics and chemistry as part of a cyber-physical system for process control.

Instead, a digital twin is now an animation of part movements and machine status in a line for production control. This has effectively disabled discussions of digital twins in the context of cyber-physical systems, which matters in stabilizing and establishing capability for high-technology processes like additive manufacturing.

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