Digital Twin: What It Is, Why Do It, Related Challenges, and Research Opportunities for Operations Research

Digital Twin, a new advanced digitalization paradigm, has attracted interest worldwide over the past five years. Practitioners and scholars alike still struggle with defining and realizing Digital Twin’s possibilities in real-life scenarios. To resolve such confusion, we highlight four essential elements of successful Digital Twin implementation, namely data, simulation, connection, and human. The four elements’ necessity is explained well through three proposed critical challenges: (1) digital at scale, (2) decision intelligence in data-intensive systems, and (3) consistency between objectives, decisions, and execution. We recognize that Operations Research (OR) expertise plays a vital role in building an efficient and intelligent Digital Twin. We identify six promising research opportunities for the OR community that could expand the scope and depth of OR theory.