Barriers and Overcoming Strategies for Adopting Digital Twin in the Manufacturing Industry

This study investigates the main barriers and overcoming strategies for the implementation of digital twin (DT) technology in the manufacturing industry. The research, conducted in a two-step process, first employed a modified Delphi method with seasoned industry experts to identify and classify main barriers. Later, the best-worst method (BWM) ranked main barriers and mitigation strategies. The most critical challenges determined are the integration of legacy systems, high implementation cost, and data quality. Retrofitting hardware, rolling out cloud services, and edge computing were determined as the best solutions. The findings give real-world insights for organizations seeking to deploy DTs in a prioritized set of tasks and activities applicable to the manufacturing context.