Deliberate and Emergent Strategies for Digital Twin Utilization : A PLM-Principal’s Perspective

Sammanfattning: The industry has during the past decades been changing towardsdigitalization at a rapid pace, adapting new frameworks and digitalsolutions, with the thrive to improve efficiency, and output quality.This thesis covers how a hyped industry concept, digital twin, incontext of smart manufacturing, could be applied in this changingclimate. Focus is put on what strategies a Product LifecycleManagement (PLM) principal could adapt when approaching theutilization of digital twins, in a customer setting. The research project, using a qualitative exploration format,incorporated a thorough review of journal articles and standards,interconnected with conducted interviews with industry experts, inorder to develop two strategies on how to approach the conceptof digital twins. The two-part strategies were formed on the basis of Mintzberg(1978) emergent and deliberate strategies. The former, consisted ofIDEF0 function modeling diagramming, where a digital twin businessprocess was portrayed, based on the literature review and interviewdata. The latter, approached the digital twin application challenge ina theoretical manner, based on the concept’s high risk anduncertainty, incorporating organizational structure theory andinnovation theory. The two strategies showed two different pathsto approach the digital twin phenomena and how to, boththeoretically and practically, adapt digital twins in a customer setting.