To achieve a highly agile and flexible production, it is envisioned that
industrial production systems gradually become more decentralized,
interconnected, and intelligent. Within this vision, production assets
collaborate with each other, exhibiting a high degree of autonomy. Furthermore,
knowledge about individual production assets is readily available throughout
their entire life-cycles. To realize this vision, adequate use of information
technology is required. Two commonly applied software paradigms in this context
are Software Agents (referred to as Agents) and Digital Twins (DTs). This work
presents a systematic comparison of Agents and DTs in industrial applications.
The goal of the study is to determine the differences, similarities, and
potential synergies between the two paradigms. The comparison is based on the
purposes for which Agents and DTs are applied, the properties and capabilities
exhibited by these software paradigms, and how they can be allocated within the
Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0. The comparison reveals that Agents
are commonly employed in the collaborative planning and execution of production
processes, while DTs typically play a more passive role in monitoring
production resources and processing information. Although these observations
imply characteristic sets of capabilities and properties for both Agents and
DTs, a clear and definitive distinction between the two paradigms cannot be
made. Instead, the analysis indicates that production assets utilizing a
combination of Agents and DTs would demonstrate high degrees of intelligence,
autonomy, sociability, and fidelity. To achieve this, further standardization
is required, particularly in the field of DTs.