THE DIGITAL TWIN AS A SERVICE ENABLER

Industry 4.0’s technologies enable companies to offer new services and add functions and value to their products. Digital Twin (DT) is the result of a combined application of such technologies and allows the integration between physical objects and their virtual counterparts by the use of the data collected on both ends. This means that once designed and built, it can be used to develop in a very short time, and with little effort, new services. For this reason, the main goal of this research project is to understand how it can be used as a service enabler for manufacturing companies. More specifically, the purpose is divided into two research questions: what is a DT? How can DT enable service offerings? How can we assess the value created by the DT? Lastly, this thesis aims to cover the topic of my research grant on the “Development of strategies for the introduction of additive manufacturing for metals in manufacturing companies” analyzing a method to evaluate the return on investment of this type of technology.