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.

翻译：为实现高度敏捷和灵活的生产，工业制造系统正逐步向去中心化、互联化和智能化方向发展。在此愿景下，生产资产之间相互协作，展现出高度自主性，且单个生产资产的全生命周期知识可随时获取。要达成这一目标，需充分利用信息技术。在此背景下，两种常用的软件范式是软件主体（Agents）与数字孪生（Digital Twins，DTs）。本文对工业应用中软件主体与数字孪生进行了系统性比较，旨在明确两种范式之间的差异、相似性及潜在协同效应。比较基于软件主体与数字孪生的应用目的、两类软件范式所展现的特质与能力，以及它们在工业4.0参考架构模型中的定位方式展开。研究揭示，软件主体通常用于生产过程的协同规划与执行，而数字孪生则在生产资源监控与信息处理中扮演更为被动的角色。尽管这些观察结果暗示了软件主体与数字孪生各自具备典型的能力与特质集合，但二者之间难以划出清晰明确的界限。相反，分析表明，采用软件主体与数字孪生组合的生产资产将展现出高度的智能性、自主性、社交性与保真度。为实现这一目标，需要进一步强化标准化工作，尤其在数字孪生领域。