A factory planning and design framework for integrating the Digital Twin in Industry 4.0

Factory planning and design is a key building block for coining the strategic competitiveness of a manufacturing company. Novel trends in Industry 4.0 such as mass customization for increasingly dynamic markets, the emergence of the Industrial Digital Twin, or growing connectivity and cloud manufacturing are leading to changing requirements for planning and designing factories. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) struggle with these novel complexity challenges. A novel process model for factory planning and design in Industry 4.0 is presented. To enhance the current state-of-the-art for factory planning and design frameworks, the model enables the integration of the Industrial Digital Twin i.e., the Asset Administration Shell, into the overall factory planning and design process. Eventually, the process model is exemplarily applied to designing a container factory. Based on this case, its efficacy as well as its suitability for SMEs is verified. Thus, the process model can support SMEs in realizing a higher return on investments by creating novel digital and data-driven business models based on connected manufacturing assets.