Orchestrating Digital Twins for Distributed Manufacturing Execution Systems

digital twin,testing,modelling,communication,distributed systems

We propose a generic framework for generating scenarios for orchestrating digital twins of distributed manufacturing execution systems (MES). The orchestration is a typical technique for configuring, managing and coordinating the communication in various types of system. We focus on its particular application for testing of distributed systems: e.g., when a new version of MES is about to be released one may create the testing scenario observing the behaviour of the older version already deployed in the production and then use the scenario to orchestrate the digital twin to test the new version. Specifically, we build on communication logs captured from a manufactory with deployed MES and create an abstract model of communication inside the distributed system and abstract models of messages passed in the communication. Based on these models we then generate a scenario which is further used to orchestrate the digital twin. Moreover, our approach can also automatically extrapolate the new testing scenarios from the derived models allowing efficient automated testing.