The concept of Digital Twin (DT) seems promising to improve the management of patient pathways in Emergency Departments (EDs). This article proposes an agent-based architecture of a DT designed for that purpose. The core of this DT is its Information System (IS), which is regularly synchronised on the IS of the Physical Twin (PT). The agents model the ED’s resources (equipment and staff) and patients in the DT and update this information in the DT’s IS. This article shows how such a DT may operate in three modes: (0) “Digital Shadow” to monitor the ED’s current state in real time, (1) “Synchronised DT” to monitor the ED’s current and future states according to a predictive simulation, and (2) “Exploratory DT” in order to perform Monte Carlo simulations of various future states. Mode (1) is the main contribution. This proposition is illustrated in a simulation of the ED in order to demonstrate the capabilities.

Complex system development activities, such as requirements analysis (RA) to requirements specification, implementation and verification, are well defined in the software engineering domain. Interests in using a model-driven engineering have increased in this domain. System-level RA and model-driven engineering may result in a significant improvement in engineering design. This paper presents a Checklist-Oriented Requirement Analysis (CORA) framework to develop and formalize requirements. CORA is an integrated framework that adopts a checklist concept and utilises logical reasoning operation in conjunction with information management to analyse systematically the initial requirements statement. An underground work machine is used as an application example to illustrate the proposed framework.

Wide diffusion of methodologies and software relevant to product lifecycle management (PLM) in industrial companies faces heterogeneity of information technology (IT) systems. Especially, the lack of interoperability between product data management (PDM) systems, that drive virtual product development, and enterprise resource planning (ERP), which manages real product, cannot lead to a global description of the product development process. We demonstrate that a mediator approach is pertinent for the coordination of these two systems. The use of open standards, and more precisely STEP Application Protocol 239, known as product lifecycle support (PLCS), allows overcoming issues related to semantic part of this interoperability. The last part of the study focuses on implementation issues, in order to develop an interoperability framework based upon a consistent product data model, whether the viewpoint is from the design or logistics businesses.