A new description model for enabling more general manufacturing systems representation in digital twin

The demand for high efficiency and flexible production has led to more complex and flexible production organizations in discrete manufacturing systems. How to rapidly construct/reconfigure a workshop digital twin in response to a configurable complex physical production organization becomes a challenging problem. To address this challenge, based on the existing SevenElement description model, we propose an improved Material Nodes-oriented SevenElements (MNOSE) description model. This model is not only capable of describing/expressing inter-device relationships among manufacturing equipment/devices but also intra-device internal relationships between the device and materials handled by it. Its potential impact on shop-floor digital twin is to make an updating of shop-floor digital twin easier and faster because it can easily express and rapidly (re)-construct a shop-floor digital shadow in response to a rapidly physically reconfigured workshop for a different production organization. In addition, the model can drive the logical unification of multiple digital twin services in a plant and improve the efficiency of integration between several information systems. The utility of the description model in describing shop floor is demonstrated by a case study and validated by modeling representations of typical production organizations.