Digital Twin Providing New Opportunities for Value Co-Creation through Supporting Decision-Making

• Main Authors: Shaun West, Oliver Stoll, Jürg Meierhofer, Simon Züst
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: big data; action research; decision-making; value proposition; value co-creation; digital twins
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/3750

The application of digital twins provides value creation within the fields of operations and service management; existing research around decision-making and value co-creation is limited at this point. Prior studies have provided insights into the benefits of digital twins that combined both data and simulation approaches; however, there remains a managerial gap. The purpose of this paper is to explore this research gap using input from a multiple case study research design from both manufacturing environments and non-manufacturing environments. The authors use ten cases to explore how digital twins support value co-creation through decision-making. The authors were all involved in the development of the ten cases. Individual biases were removed by using the literature to provide the assessment dimensions and allowing a convergence of the results. Drawing on the lessons from the ten cases, this study empirically identified eight managerial issues that need to be considered when developing digital twins to support multi-stakeholder decision-making that leads to value co-creation. The application of digital twins in value co-creation and decision-making is a topic that has developed from practice and is an area where a research gap exists between theory and practice. A cross-case analysis was developed based on the literature and the ten cases (eight industrial and two pilot-scale cases) providing the empirical findings. The findings describe how firms can design, develop, and commercialize digital-twin-enabled value propositions and will initiate future research.