OMiLAB: A Smart Innovation Environment for Digital Engineers

This position paper introduces a Smart Innovation Environment for experimentation related to digital transformation projects, for the consolidation of a proposed "Digital Engineer" skill profile (with a business-oriented facet labelled as "Digital Innovator"). In the Internet of Things era, this profile implies the ability to perform both digital design and engineering activities, to semantically bridge multiple layers of abstraction and specificity – from business analysis down to cyber-physical engineering. In the paper's proposal, this integration is enabled by conceptual modelling methods and interoperable modelling tools, tailored to support the creation of Digital Twins for innovative digital business models. The architecture of the proposed environment is guided by a Design Research perspective – i.e., it is a treatment to an education "design problem" regarding the Digital Engineer skill profile in the IoT era. The proposed environment encompasses workspaces and toolkits are currently evaluated in "innovation corners" deployed across the OMiLAB ecosystem.