Open Source Drives Digital Twin Adoption
interoperable Digital Twin remains elusive . As a result , fragmentation of the market due to lack of interoperability and confusion regarding “ which standards should I use ?” can be expected . Additionally , the complexity of Digital Twins might increase if all competing standards are needed , although they provide the same value . Similar to multiple organizations investing their efforts in defining and specifying similar standards , different Open Source projects aiming at the same or overlapping solutions might lead to confusion in the market and fragmentation of the technology . Moreover , different Open Source projects would miss the opportunity of having a sufficient number of active contributors leveraging the quality of the code instead of creating similar solutions competing with each other .
Going beyond setting up collaboration and liaison to align activities across organizations , the following recommendations could be explored in future discussions :
• A more detailed assessment of individual Open Source projects driven by the organizations evaluated in this paper could be addressed in future works ( similar to the joint paper of IIC and Plattform 4.0 on the Digital Twin and AAS topic 9 ). Based on this detailed assessment , a mapping of Open Source projects based on the identification of overlapping and unique features following predefined criteria ( e . g . technology being used , open standard being implemented , manufacturing focus , etc .) of these projects could be performed . Using this mapping , activities and efforts of Open Source projects could be closely aligned in terms of their overlapping elements and refocused on the unique challenges they are solving . At the same time , such mapping can serve as a guide for the contributors as well as for users of the Open Source projects as to which Open Source project to contribute , or which Open Source Project should to be integrated in the products .
• Open source can be tested in testbeds to validate their applicability and interoperability by building , for example , Proof of Concepts ( PoCs ). Such testbeds provide a neutral environment where members , developers , and community exchange their experiences and align their activities .
Finally , in developing and promoting interoperable Digital Twin , it is neither " code first " nor " specification first ", but the joint effort and synergy between the two parallel developments that will bring the expected accomplishment in the context of IIoT / Industry 4.0 .
DISCLOSURE
Authors of this paper are members of the organizations classified in this whitepaper : IIC , DTC , GAIA-X , IDTA , CESMII , Open Industry 4.0 Alliance , or / and Plattform Industrie 4.0 .
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