Digital Twin in Practice: Emergent Insights from an ethnographic-action research study

TL;DR

This ethnographic-action research study explores the practical challenges faced by practitioners in deploying Digital Twins in an automated highway maintenance project, highlighting issues in understanding, capability selection, and resource allocation.

Contribution

The paper provides empirical insights into real-world obstacles in Digital Twin deployment, emphasizing the importance of shared understanding and organizational assessment.

Findings

Practitioners struggle with establishing a shared understanding of Digital Twins.

Difficulty in evaluating and selecting appropriate Digital Twin capabilities.

Challenges in resource allocation due to unclear organizational impact.

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic action research study for a Digital Twin (DT) deployment on an automated highway maintenance project, this paper reports some of the stumbling blocks that practitioners face while deploying a DT in practice. At the outset, the scope of the case study was broadly defined in terms of digitalization, and software development and deployment, which later pivoted towards the concept of Digital Twin during the collective reflection sessions between the project participants. Through an iterative learning cycle via discussions among the various project stakeholders, the case study led to uncovering the roadblocks in practice faced by the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) practitioners. This research finds that the practitioners are facing difficulty in: (1) Creating a shared understanding due to the lack of consensus on the Digital Twin concept, (2) Adapting and investing in Digital Twin due to inability to exhaustively evaluate and select the appropriate capabilities in a Digital Twin, and (3) Allocation of resources for Digital Twin development due to the inability to assess the impact of DT on the organizational conditions and processes.