scope:

This standard establishes the IPC Digital Twin, which is comprised of the Digital Twin Product, Digital Twin Manufacturing and Digital Twin Lifecycle frameworks. Within the Digital Twin Architecture, this standard stipulates and defines Digital Twin properties, types, complexities and readiness levels. The IPC Digital Twin includes historical information about a product, including the history of design in terms of revision and engineering changes, and manufacturing information, that many refer to as the Digital Thread.

This standard enables any manufacturer, design organization or solution provider to initiate application interoperability to create smart value chains, as well as the mechanism to assess their current IPC Digital Twin readiness level.

This standard provides the information and guidance necessary to understand a full IPC Digital Twin, Digital Twin Product, Digital Twin Manufacturing and Digital Twin Lifecycle. This standard also provides information and guidance on how organizations benefit from the IPC Digital Twin, how to assess IPC Digital Twin readiness level and how to prepare an organization of any size or production volume to implement a full IPC Digital Twin approach to its organization and/or products.

Purpose

The purpose of the standard is to enable interoperability of all forms of processing of digital data related to a product, that precisely match and represents the physical capabilities. In this way, any manufacturer is able to create and utilize the IPC Digital Twin to represent every process and possible actions taken on a product within the manufacturing and lifecycle environment, for engineering, modelling, planning, quality and reliability analysis, simulations, etc. Critical decisions for product, process and material design can be optimized within the digital realm with the certainty that the expected performance and benefits will exist in the physical world. The effect is that physical prototypes of any description can be avoided, including trial and error, resulting in vastly reduced lead-time and costs, as well as elimination of mistakes.