[2] It is a data-driven architecture that links data gathered during a Product lifecycle from all involved and distributed manufacturing systems.
[7] Idaho National Laboratories describes Digital Twin as "the merging of integrated and connected data, sensors and instrumentation, artificial intelligence, and online monitoring into a single cohesive unit.
It was primarily authored by John Darrington and Cristopher Ritter to tackle Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tool integrations and warehousing, and has evolved to enable support for digital twin.
"[4] Big data analytics and artificial intelligence used in conjunction with Digital Thread are increasingly more required in smart manufacturing applications.
Artificial Intelligence can be trained using this data to create "autonomously self-improving production processes [14] and to facilitate organizational decision-making".
[4] "the digital thread paradigm not only leads to the accumulation and processing of massive amounts of data but is also shaped by the analytical results these both technologies provide".