Development and transformation towards sustainability with digital twins How can digital twins help make companies and their development more sustainable? This is the question addressed by the EcoTwin project. A digital twin is a digital image of a physical product and captures, processes and networks selected information. This is increasingly perceived as a competitive advantage and can increase the sustainability of companies as part of the dual transformation. Together with Herbert Kannegiesser GmbH and the Wuppertal Institute, Fraunhofer IEM is developing an approach for planning, designing, developing and implementing Digital Green Twins.

The topic of sustainability has long since ceased to be a simple trend, but is regarded as an imperative measure for companies to achieve environmentally compatible and responsible use of natural resources and materials. At the same time, other aspects of sustainability must be integrated and implemented throughout the entire product life cycle. Digitization offers continuous potential for achieving economic, ecological and social sustainability through technological innovations (e.g. artificial intelligence, digital twin) in the individual phases of the life cycle.

The goal of the overall project is to design an application-oriented framework for the design of Digital Green Twins. It addresses both technical and organizational issues and shows which stakeholder-specific benefits a Digital Twin offers for the achievement of sustainability goals. Currently, there is no approach that shows the potential of the digital twin in terms of sustainability for companies. In order to achieve the overall goal, the most diverse application areas along the product life cycle and the associated company areas (development, production, service) are being examined in particular. The aim is to derive a system that supports companies in the individual design of a target image that takes sustainability requirements into account. Based on this, specific use cases as well as technical and organizational requirements for the digital twin are derived. The use cases in turn form the basis for defining interaction concepts for the digital twin.

Test Currently, there is no approach that shows and systematically develops the potential of digital twins in terms of sustainability for companies. For this reason, this project aims to implement a holistic planning, conceptualization, development and implementation of Green Digital Twins. In particular, the most diverse areas of application along the product life cycle and the associated company areas (development, production, service) will be examined. For this purpose, a system is derived which supports companies in the individual design of a target image taking sustainability requirements into account. Based on this, specific use cases as well as technical and organizational requirements for the digital twin are derived. The use cases in turn form the basis for the definition of interaction concepts of the digital twin.