The Challenge of Implementing Digital Twins in Operating Value Chains

Can a Byte Improve Our Bite? An Analysis of Digital Twins in the Food Industry

“…In conclusion, the implementation of digital twins requires multidisciplinary knowledge [ 31 ], especially from food science. For instance, this includes microbiological, physical, chemical, and engineering disciplines as well as knowledge for efficient process management.…”

“…Further, the complexity of the digital transformation in the FSC requires step-by-step implementation, which takes several years until a productive state is achieved. Here, on the one hand, data security and validation need to be considered [ 31 ]. On the other hand, realizing autonomous systems need to pay attention to legislation, in particular hygienic requirements as well as traceability of the system’s decision.…”

“…For example, the survey “Nutrition 4.0-Status Quo, Opportunities, and Challenges” by Germany’s digital association Bitkom and the Federation of German Food and Drink Industries (BVE) showed that 88% of the more than 300 surveyed companies in the food industry consider a lack of ICT competencies of their employees as a critical issue [ 120 ]. Secondly, the food production and processing industry is partially highly automated; however, in general, the industry is rather conservative with introducing new technology that automatically controls processes [ 31 ]. Lastly, the risk of lower attention to the real-world system and the dependency on the recommendations by digital twins need to be considered [ 52 ].…”

“…Furthermore, Jo et al [ 50 , 51 ] propose a digital twin for a pigsty to control the energy demand while adjusting the ventilation and temperature. Other publications provided too little information about the digital twin, although they were strongly related to our research, e.g., [ 31 , 52 ]. Since we were not able to classify them, we did not include those in our evaluation.…”

“…A concept closely related to digital twins are CPSs [ 31 , 32 ]. While a digital twin is a digital copy of a product or physical system with the intention of performing real-time optimization, a CPS merges computational and physical processes to seamlessly support humans with intelligence when using machines [ 33 ].…”