Toward a concept of digital twin for monitoring assembly and disassembly processes

Quality is one of the key factors in the customer’s selection process between competing products. Producing high-quality, defect-free products that meet consumer expectations is crucial for manufacturing companies to gain a competitive advantage. Accordingly, developing appropriate defect generation models is essential in modern manufacturing companies to predict defects and plan efficient quality control and production. On the other hand, with its ability to support new business models and decision support systems, digital twin technology is one of the new technologies emerging to support digital transformation. Faster optimization algorithms, more powerful computers, and a massive increase in available data are just some of the features of digital twins that can be used to advance simulation toward real-time quality control and optimization of products and production systems. This paper aims to model the generation of defects of product variants in assembly and disassembly processes and evaluate their integration within a digital twin system to prevent the occurrence of defects and ensure product quality. The proposed strategy is expected to improve the optimization, monitoring, and diagnostic capabilities of complex product variants’ assembly and disassembly systems, realizing an upgrade from a single physical implementation to a combination of physical and digital.