Data Evolution Governance for Ontology-Based Digital Twin Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is an effective method for enhancing the market competitiveness of modern manufacturing industries. The digital twin is characterized by a profound integration of physics and information systems, which provides a technical means for integrating multisource information and breaking the time and space barrier of communication at each link of the lifecycle. Currently, however, the application of this technology focuses primarily on the product itself and “service-oriented” application results. There is a lack of focus on twin data and its internal evolutionary mechanisms separately. In the management of global data resources, the benefits of digital twin technology cannot be fully realized. This article applies ontology technology in an innovative manner to the field of the digital twin to increase the reusability of twin data. Initially, a four-layered ontology-based twin data management architecture is presented. Then, a three-dimensional and three-granularity unified evolution model of full lifecycle twin data is proposed, as well as its ontology model. Then, the service mode of data components at each stage of the lifecycle is defined, a knowledge-sharing plane is established in the digital twin, and a data governance method based on ontology reasoning using data components on the shared plane is proposed. The ICandyBox simulation platform is then used to demonstrate the concept of the proposed method, and future research directions are proposed.