Actionable Cognitive Twins for Decision Making in Manufacturing

TL;DR

This paper introduces Actionable Cognitive Twins, which are enhanced digital twins with knowledge graphs and AI for improved decision-making in manufacturing, demonstrated through use cases in automotive production planning.

Contribution

It proposes a knowledge graph modeling approach for creating actionable cognitive twins tailored to demand forecasting and production planning in manufacturing.

Findings

Effective semantic descriptions for manufacturing processes

Successful application in automotive industry use cases

Enhanced decision support through integrated knowledge graphs

Abstract

Actionable Cognitive Twins are the next generation Digital Twins enhanced with cognitive capabilities through a knowledge graph and artificial intelligence models that provide insights and decision-making options to the users. The knowledge graph describes the domain-specific knowledge regarding entities and interrelationships related to a manufacturing setting. It also contains information on possible decision-making options that can assist decision-makers, such as planners or logisticians. In this paper, we propose a knowledge graph modeling approach to construct actionable cognitive twins for capturing specific knowledge related to demand forecasting and production planning in a manufacturing plant. The knowledge graph provides semantic descriptions and contextualization of the production lines and processes, including data identification and simulation or artificial intelligence algorithms and forecasts used to support them. Such semantics provide ground for inferencing, relating different knowledge types: creative, deductive, definitional, and inductive. To develop the knowledge graph models for describing the use case completely, systems thinking approach is proposed to design and verify the ontology, develop a knowledge graph and build an actionable cognitive twin. Finally, we evaluate our approach in two use cases developed for a European original equipment manufacturer related to the automotive industry as part of the European Horizon 2020 project FACTLOG.