Digital Twin and IIoT in Optimizing Manufacturing Process and Quality Management
management application in the steel industry , guided by Lean management and Six Sigma concepts and best practice , built on an Industrial Internet platform embedded with a digital twin framework , extending the application of IIoT and digital twin beyond the commonly known domain of asset management and predictive maintenance .
The production process control and quality management application brings Industrial Internet , digital twin ( including equipment and product digital twins ), streaming and batch data analytics , machine learning , fused with Lean management and Six Sigma concepts and best practice into manufacturing process and quality management . By integrating and analyzing data from the equipment and other manufacturing IT systems , the system enables the correlation and monitoring of process design specification and actual process data , and quality data in near real time
• to promptly identify and resolve production problems ,
• identify potential improvements in current and new manufacturing processes through the quality-process feedback loop , and
• to provide track and trace capability on product quality on individual products through the implementation of product digital twin .
To the end , the system helps the manufacture operator to ensure product quality and reduce production cost .
The concepts and practice of the Industrial Internet have been widely applied in various industries . The implementations of digital twins are starting to pick up in industries as well . At this moment , however , these implementations are disproportionally in the area of equipment maintenance in the large domain of asset management with novel features such as predictive maintenance supported by advanced analytics . There are few and far between real world use cases penetrating in the production processes covering broader application domains such as production process , quality , energy , equipment and operation safety management , each of which presents a deep and rich field where IIoT and digital twin technologies can offer great potential benefits .
In a previous volume of Journal of Innovation published by the Industrial Internet Consortium , part of the authors of this article co-authored an article reporting a real-world use case of the Industrial Internet and digital twin in energy management in the steel industry 4 . In the same vein , we report in this article the application of IIoT and digital twin technologies in production process and quality management in steel production processes that has the following characteristics :
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Shi-Wan Lin , Maxine Fu and Kebin Li , Digital Twin + Industrial Internet for Smart Manufacturing : A Case Study in the Steel Industry , Journal of Innovation , Industrial Internet Consortium , Nov . 2019 .
IIC Journal of Innovation - 59 -