{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,27]],"date-time":"2026-03-27T15:54:51Z","timestamp":1774626891444,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":68,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,28]],"date-time":"2022-04-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1651104000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"EU H2020 IoTwins Innovation Action","award":["g.a. 857191"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["g.a. 857191"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>While the digital twins paradigm has attracted the interest of several research communities over the past twenty years, it has also gained ground recently in industrial environments, where mature technologies such as cloud, edge and IoT promise to enable the cost-effective implementation of digital twins. In the industrial manufacturing field, a digital model refers to a virtual representation of a physical product or process that integrates data taken from various sources, such as application program interface (API) data, historical data, embedded sensor data and open data, and that is capable of providing manufacturers with unprecedented insights into the product\u2019s expected performance or the defects that may cause malfunctions. The EU-funded IoTwins project aims to build a solid platform that manufacturers can access to develop hybrid digital twins (DTs) of their assets, deploy them as close to the data origin as possible (on IoT gateway or on edge nodes) and take advantage of cloud-based resources to off-load intensive computational tasks such as, e.g., big data analytics and machine learning (ML) model training. In this paper, we present the main research goals of the IoTwins project and discuss its reference architecture, platform functionalities and building components. Finally, we discuss an industry-related use case that showcases how manufacturers can leverage the potential of the IoTwins platform to develop and execute distributed DTs for the the predictive-maintenance purpose.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/computers11050067","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,28]],"date-time":"2022-04-28T12:06:01Z","timestamp":1651147561000},"page":"67","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":51,"title":["IoTwins: Toward Implementation of Distributed Digital Twins in Industry 4.0 Settings"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7423-9423","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alessandro","family":"Costantini","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies (CNAF), Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), 40127 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0298-7828","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Giuseppe","family":"Di Modica","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, 40132 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jean Christian","family":"Ahouangonou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ESI GROUP, 94150 Rungis, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0124-4870","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Doina Cristina","family":"Duma","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies (CNAF), Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), 40127 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6179-9325","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Barbara","family":"Martelli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies (CNAF), Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), 40127 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7985-7311","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Matteo","family":"Galletti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies (CNAF), Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), 40127 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2641-9403","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marica","family":"Antonacci","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) Sez. Bari, 70126 Bari, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Daniel","family":"Nehls","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fraunhofer FOKUS, 10589 Berlin, Germany"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0992-7948","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Paolo","family":"Bellavista","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Bologna, 40132 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Cedric","family":"Delamarre","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ESI GROUP, 94150 Rungis, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1828-1715","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Daniele","family":"Cesini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Research and Development on Information and Communication Technologies (CNAF), Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), 40127 Bologna, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"(2022, March 13). 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