Industrial Maintenance and the Digital Twin—An Architectural Assessment

The fourth industrial revolution is characterized by intelligent factories that connect the different elements of the production process such as machines, systems and people, integrating them vertically and horizontally, in order to improve production logistics, use of resources, reduce production defects and use of raw materials. The information flow emerges as the main engine of this industrial revolution and its most important asset. The maintenance sector, from this informational perspective, appears as one of the areas with the greatest impact potential in the adoption of industry 4.0-oriented technologies, playing a critical role in sustaining an organization's operations. The literature points to different architectures aimed at implementing the functions of industrial maintenance and which present an evolutionary orientation to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0. This evolution, currently, is directed towards the Digital Twin concept, which provides a new paradigm for the redesign of architectural functions and components with greater focus on simulation, data analysis, prediction function and decision making. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the different architectures aimed at industrial maintenance under the requirements of Industry 4.0 and provide a guiding position for them in relation to the Digital Twin.