Digital Twin Architecture and Standards
candidate concerns and scenarios to
stakeholders creates confusion because
there may be less interest in some of the
topics. It is more effective to create topic
headlines that are subject to interpretation
and allow interviewees to shape their
meaning and provide additional alternatives.
Once the list is narrowed by the audience, it
is the right time to drill deeper for
clarification.
L ESSONS L EARNED
The number one challenge facing architects
who are designing and building Industrial IoT
is the interchange of data between the
mechanical, digital and human components
of an industrial process. 14 There are ongoing
standards efforts at each of these levels, but
competitive pressures and market demands
are more powerful factors in determining
the components and their interactions.
The third lesson is that stakeholders rarely
have crisp ideas of what they want. Initial
motivations come from their existing and
potential customers and what is perceived
to be provided by competitors. True
innovation
comes
from
presenting
alternative visions and future scenarios
independent of technology choices, inviting
feedback and revision. This process brings
out the key stakeholder concerns and helps
communicate what is possible.
There are many choices for Industrial IoT
communication protocols, middleware,
infrastructure, services and application
frameworks. Successful interoperability will
come not from waiting for all the ecosystem
participants to agree on a set of standards,
but by providing adapters that facilitate data
exchange between different systems. Digital
twin abstractions can serve as these
adapters.
C ONCLUSIONS AND F UTURE W ORK
The first lesson learned is to embrace the
overall complexity rather than hope to avoid
it. Commonality occurs naturally in clusters,
not from imposed governance. Within those
clusters, built to purpose, the APIs and
information models evolve to meet specific
objectives. Over time the applications and
markets will determine which standards
bring business value.
The top three benefits from the architecture
recommendations for our digital twin
approach are to:
1. Reduce API (but not information
model) complexity,
2. Enhance privacy and security, and
3. Manage connectivity.
The second lesson learned, also related to
complexity, is that requirements are best
developed incrementally and iteratively
starting with business objectives and
concerns. Presenting a detailed list of
Digital twin capabilities provide a common
facility for data persistence and application
notification in the Industrial IoT ecosystem,
standardizing how data is managed and
distributed. Applications connect to digital
14
Boughton, P. 2015. Blog Post. The challenges of creating the Industrial Internet of Things. ENGINEERLIVE. URL=
http://www.engineerlive.com/content/challenges-creating-industrial-internet-things.
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