Supporting Changes in Digital Ownership and Data Sovereignty Across the Automotive Value Chain with Catena-X

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how Digital Twins in the automotive sector can be updated across a multi-stakeholder lifecycle while addressing data sovereignty and ownership. Using Catena-X as a case study, it contrasts three updating approaches—One Digital Twin, Several Digital Twins, and Several Digital Twins with Licensing and Notification—through a workflow-driven automotive use-case and a DT-VModel methodology. It discusses the trade-offs in data sovereignty, continuity, and governance, and identifies open issues for policy enforcement, cross-organization data sharing, and scalability. The findings inform design choices for future DT architectures in circular economy contexts and highlight Catena-X as a platform for validating cross-enterprise DT integration.

Abstract

Digital Twins have evolved as a concept describing digital representations of physical assets. They can be used to facilitate simulations, monitoring, or optimization of product lifecycles. Considering the concept of a Circular Economy, which entails several lifecycles of, e.g., vehicles, their components, and materials, it is important to investigate how the respective Digital Twins are managed over the lifecycle of their physical assets. This publication presents and compares three approaches for managing Digital Twins in industrial use cases. The analysis considers aspects such as updates, data ownership, and data sovereignty. The results based on the research project Catena-X

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Sample figure caption.
• Figure 3: Approach to identify requirements and solutions
• Figure 4: Update Scenario 1 - One Digital Twin
• Figure 5: Update Scenario 2 - Several Digital Twins
• Figure 6: Update Scenario 3 - Several Digital Twins with Licensing and Notification