A conceptual digital twin for cost-effective development of a welding robotic system for smart manufacturing

With rapid technology advancements and impacts of digital transformation technologies, there have been a lot of efforts in recent years at the global and national scope to develop technology eco-systems moving toward Industry 4.0. There has also been a growing number of studies about optimization of process parameters based on AI, IoT and Bigdata analytics, including CNC machining, additive manufacturing, as well as industrial welding with robots, for development of Smart Manufacturing (SM), which is one of the key elements of Industry 4.0. However, there are challenges to fully develop and apply in industrial practices the ideal SM models in the next 5 to 10 years. It is necessary to develop the cost-effective SM models that are easy to understand with a high level of applicability in practice and adoptability for SMEs. In this paper, a conceptual digital twin is proposed, with the focus on cost-effective design and development of a welding robotic system for smart manufacturing. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.