Exploring the Digital Twin implementation for sustainable production

The Digital Twin (DT) is the representation and real-time integration of physical systems in a digital model using several technologies. The DT development can be an effective solution for improving sustainability indicators of production activities. Despite the growing interest in this research area, there are still many problems with enabling an efficient application of DT to improve the sustainable performance of production activities. To contribute to the construction of knowledge in this domain, this paper aims to investigate, by a literature review, how the DT is currently applied to support sustainable production and what are the main components characterizing the existing DT frameworks or architectures. Production activities and objectives, the main layers and enabling technologies considered by literature frameworks, and some examples of sustainability goals and indicators considered by the DT literature for sustainable production were identified. Based on the review results, the main elements that characterize architectures or frameworks based on DT for the sustainability of production activities were established.