  This paper proposes a new concept in which a digital twin derived from a
digital product description will automatically perform assembly planning and
orchestrate the production resources in a manufacturing cell. Thus the
manufacturing cell has generic services with minimal assumptions about what
kind of product will be assembled, while the digital product description is
designed collaboratively between the designer at an OEM and automated services
at potential manufacturers. This has several advantages. Firstly, the resulting
versatile manufacturing facility can handle a broad variety of products with
minimal or no reconfiguration effort, so it can cost-effectively offer its
services to a large number of OEMs. Secondly, a solution is presented to the
problem of performing concurrent product design and assembly planning over the
organizational boundary. Thirdly, the product design at the OEM is not
constrained to the capabilities of specific manufacturing facilities. The
concept is presented in general terms in UML and an implementation is provided
in a 3D simulation environment using Automation Markup Language for digital
product descriptions. Finally, two case studies are presented and applications
in a real industrial context are discussed.
