Digital Twin pipeline: An open and collaborative Knowledge Management System for Digital Twin implementation, benchmark and design

Abstract: Nowadays, Industry 4.0 faces challenges regarding the implementation of digital solutions that connect the physical and digital worlds. With the growing open innovation initiatives, open knowledge sharing appears to be an interesting lever for connecting actors facing similar challenges and supporting the dissemination of technical solutions tailored to the actors’ context. This article proposes an open and collaborative knowledge management system. Its purpose is to enable industrial and academic actors to document, share, find, and discover new end-to-end solutions that connect the physical world to the digital world, thereby operationalizing the concept of Digital Twins. The article begins with a background section on digital twin tools and knowledge management. Then, a benchmark is conducted on community-based knowledge sharing platforms related to digital twin solutions. No platform met the assessment criteria. This result leads to the article's proposition: an open and collaborative knowledge management system for Digital Twin end-to-end solutions. The proposed platform is powered by an open CMS/wiki, and its use is illustrated with an academic end-to-end Digital Twin solution. The article concludes with discussions on theoretical and operational aspects of the documentation process, limitations of the proposition, and future work.