Green digital twin for more sustainable production

Companies are embedded in complex supply chains and often have little direct influence on the sustainability of their value creation. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to produce sustainably in order to meet current legal requirements and customer expectations and remain competitive. Digitalization offers many opportunities to integrate sustainability aspects into the individual phases of the product life cycle: A green digital twin can help to process and evaluate development, production and operating data and identify sustainability potential.

Transparent supply chains, reduced resource consumption, increased recycling rates: All of this contributes to a company's carbon footprint. The EcoTwin research project shows how, for example, the carbon footprint can be optimized and made more transparent by collecting, linking and analysing data. In four work packages, the researchers are working with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy to develop green digital twins for various divisions of Herbert Kannegiesser GmbH.

In a first step, the research team is identifying sustainability drivers along the product life cycle and possible use cases. Using the example of an industrial car wash, a guideline will be developed to show how digital green twins can be designed. Based on these digital twins, simulations will be carried out to show how products can be developed more sustainably from the outset. To achieve this, the project participants are building a database and information models that take the entire product life cycle into account. The resulting data is analyzed and interpreted. The aim is to gain a better understanding of production processes, make product development more sustainable and store and use material, operating, maintenance and wear data for future applications. So-called quick checks test the practicability of the solutions developed for other companies