Digital Twin and Extended Reality: Strategic Approach and Practical Implementation

Nowadays, the digital transformation (driven by the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) paradigm) is becoming one of the most promising and valuable strategies to address business needs of manufacturing players in terms of agility, efficiency, and real-time reactivity. Among available digital (I4.0-based) technologies, Digital Twins (DTs) are described by researchers and practitioners as a key element in terms of smart manufacturing because of their potential to enable the shift from automation to autonomy. To this aim, the present chapter highlights characteristics and benefits of DTs, by proposing a strategic tool to support and guide Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) toward their adoption and exploitation. In addition, potentialities coming from the integration of both DTs and Extended Reality (ER) tools are shown through a laboratory application case.