A Critical Analysis and Roadmap for the Development and Implementation of Predictive Maintenance Digital Twins

Predictive Maintenance Digital Twin (PdMDT) is an emerging cyber-physical technology with potential to revolutionise industrial maintenance. Despite this gradual prominence, the foundational infrastructure required to stage-by-stage develop the technology is lacking. Researchers have developed reference architecture (RA), information and functional requirements and the Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for systematic development. These interventions have not addressed the stage- by-stage systematic development of PdMDT. Other gaps like the conflation of PdMDT with Predictive Maintenance (PdM), lack of formal definition of the PdMDT, inconsistent nomenclature, and partial and non-scalable implementations continue to define the field. In this research, these gaps are addressed through a systematic literature review which reveal the quality of aggregated studies from three databases—IEEE Digital Explore, Scopus, and the Web of Science, and a comparative and critical analysis of PdM and PdMDT from which several gaps in literature are discovered. The Primary contribution of this investigation is the development of a 9-stage life-cycle developmental framework for the PdMDT which necessitated the clarification of the inconsistent PdMDT terminologies, clarification of the various PdMDT implementations and a formal definition for PdMDT. All these interventions are necessary for the realisation of PdMDT at an industrial scale.