Virtual Twins as Integrative Components of Smart Products

Current ICT developments in the areas of micro-devices, hardware infrastructure as well as internet and software technologies lead to a change of the physical products we know today. Traditional products are becoming smarter every day. The product generation meeting these innovations is called “Smart Products”. As a driver of the 4^th industrial revolution these Smart Products will dominate most industrial sectors in the future. Product related data and the management of this data along the entire product lifecycle in the PLM context are becoming core components of these Smart Products. This is especially true for the tremendous amount of operational data generated by the Smart Products during their use phase. However, the management of Smart Products’ data related to a magnitude of heterogeneous product models (virtual product twins) will be crucial for the persistence of industrial companies. This paper illustrates that the virtual product twins have to be considered as integral components of Smart Products by giving concrete examples for the application of various virtual and physical products in different lifecycle phases.