Reconfiguration of smart products during their use phase based on virtual product twins

Recent ICT innovations have begun to dramatically change traditional products towards intelligent, connected Smart Products. These product-related changes inevitably imply the need for radically new engineering processes. Product development will no longer solely concentrate on the early phase of product lifecycles but also on the product use phase. Here, especially the reconfiguration of products during their use phase across different engineering domains will be a core challenge. This paper introduces a conceptual approach for the reconfiguration of Smart Products, which considers dynamical, virtual models of each real product instance using the concept of virtual product twins and an Internet of Things platform. The conceptual approach is prototypically demonstrated by considering a model environment for smart cars, which are temporarily reconfigured during their use phase. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of CIRP.