Joint Offering Evaluation Framework for Assessing the Feasibility and Business Value of a Digital Twin Use Case

The complexity of industrial challenges is emerging together with the exponentially developing information and communication technologies (ICT) that provide several implementation approaches for systems engineering. It is difficult for a single company to follow technological development and remain a pioneer in every topic. Still, the industrial challenges require experts in each technology. Therefore, collaboration among technology providers is an opportunity to gather all resources and competences needed for full delivery. A joint offering (JO) is a solution, that is, co‐created in collaboration between two or more actors that usually have complementary technological skills or value‐creation logics. A JO has several doubts relating to the use case (UC) in hand, the feasibility of the joint solution to be co‐created, the resources and skills needed to deliver the joint solution, the partners, the business value creation, the elements of the contract and the ownership of the outcome, just to mention a few. The Joint Offering Evaluation Framework (JOEF) uncovers these issues and supports decision‐making before the development of a JO starts. The JOEF comprises the Joint Offering Playbook and the Business Value Toolset (BVT). The Playbook offers seven viewpoints with checklists and tools for IT solution providers considering collaboration and co‐creation for a solution that they cannot deliver or sell alone. The BVT evaluates and illustrates the business value of a JO from the viewpoints of both creation and delivery, together with value capture and assessment. The JOEF was piloted with a digital twin (DT) UC from the pulp and paper industry.

a digital solution that is not only used by several different end users but the development of which involves several companies with heterogeneous complementary information and communication technology (ICT) related technological competences.
Companies in the IT industry are also increasingly realizing that they can no longer compete through their own product and service excellence alone. 1,6Further, the digital transformation-for example, towards digital twins (DT)-means not only changes in technology platforms but also in development, business and work processes. 7e development of a DT is a real systems engineering case including design choices depending for example on the life cycle phase of the factory (greenfield or retrofit), model construction (measurement, phenomena or hybrid based) and desired time dimension (off-line, online or real-time). 8Thus, there are also many different opportunities for business-level arrangements in which a collaboration network's ability to co-create, make strategic decisions and find solutions on cost, profit and risk-sharing are key to ensuring long-term success.
0][11] In addition, for a co-development venture of a complicated software (SW) solution, there are no pre-assessment methods.
Over the last few years, co-creation and the expected return on investment have become a fast-moving discipline, but despite the increasing importance of co-development, empirical research in the IT sector and other industries is only just emerging in the literature. 3,12,13ere are methods and tools to guide companies through their digitalization development pathways, [14][15][16] and in addition to the ICT, companies need to determine the sustainability of the business.Osterwalder et al. published the first canvases for business models 17 and value propositions, 18 which were followed by, the Need-Approach-Benefit-Competition (NABC) canvas 19 and the actions, resources and actors (ARA) canvas. 20The Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) tool perhaps paved the way for canvases. 21For quality assurance, NASA created technological readiness levels (TRL) for their space applications, which have also been adopted for less-critical terrestrial software development. 22Before assessing the value of a service, it is necessary to evaluate if the SW-based service can be created.4][25] When multiple methods and tools are available, a playbook (familiar from football and health care) guides how to proceed (play) to cover relevant issues.A playbook provides hands-on options for immediate use to follow. 26,27[30][31] The current work is particularly inspired by the Circular Economy Playbook. 32e co-development perspective has, to date, rarely been included in the preassessment of potentials, and assessments are typically geared towards measuring only the performance of a single company and are thus not suitable for use with collaboration networks. 6,33,34 addition, there may be many aspects and even contradictory viewpoints amongst participating companies, which need to be considered in an evaluation, 35,36 and the value of a joint offering (JO) should therefore be clearly defined and optimized, and risks should be reduced to an acceptable level at an early stage of development.The evaluation should include assessments of cost, profit and risks from various viewpoints and comprise both quantitative and qualitative assessments. 34,37However, there may be complexities in the evaluation process, uncertainties related to the business environment and a lack of structured data and information. 38,39Furthermore, assessing the business potential and value of a novel co-developed technological solution requires a systematic assessment approach with sufficient detail, and it is, therefore, important to enhance conceptual understanding and to provide insights into how joint solutions are developed and how they can be assessed early enough.

BACKGROUND FOR A POTENTIAL JOINT OFFERING FOR A DIGITAL TWIN USE CASE
This section outlines the essential concepts for the Joint Offering Evaluation Framework (JOEF).Thus, the joint offering (JO) is defined, and the various use case (UC) definitions are identified and brought up from the literature because the starting point of the JOEF as an industrial UC evaluation framework.The concept of DT is also clarified because the JOEF is tested with a DT UC having several implementation options and thus being also a real systems engineering dilemma.
Assessing the potential JO is not only a business model innovation process with the co-development partners. 40It should tackle also the industrial real-world problem in hand (use case) and the capabilities of the partners to co-create the requested solution.

Joint offering
The traditional approach to product and service development assumes that value is created by one actor and consumed by another, 33,34,41,42 but recent studies have increasingly considered value as a jointly created phenomenon that arises from an interaction and by assigning and allocating resources between actors. 42,43This emphasizes that there can be a large number of stakeholders participating in value co-creation together with the formation of collaboration networks in which competences and resources are pooled and applied through the interplay between parties.Still, before any offering appears it must be created and before initiating the co-creation of a digital solution the feasibility of the solution and the eligibility of partners has to be discovered and validated.
5][46] Nevertheless, no definitions of a JO were found in the literature.The dictionary definition of a joint venture describes a business or business activity in which two or more people or companies work together, and this was used as the basis for our definition.In this paper, we focus on software development and define a JO as a concept or solution that is co-created in a collaboration between two or more companies and in which the parties usually have complementary technological skills and value-creation logics. 6The parties aim to solve a challenge that is identified by their industrial customers but which they do not have the resources nor competences to implement, deliver or sell alone.This combines well with the idea of co-creation, in which the mission-oriented viewpoint has three optional processes: initiation, co-design and co-implementation. 10

Use case
The starting point for assessing any potential JO is a proper UC description: "A good engineering result depends on knowing what problem we're trying to solve." 47In the literature, there are various descriptions for a UC, and in this article, a UC represents an industrial challenge that has notable benefits if solved.It is thus more like a business UC than a system UC with technological details.
In this paper, a UC is not treated as a scenario or script 48 with a diagram, 49 such as might be used in object-oriented design supported by Unified Modelling Language (UML). 50In the financial sector, a UC is a security monitoring scenario 51 with business, threat and implementation layers.For an incident detection UC, eight UC elements were listed: objectives, threat, stakeholder, data requirements, logic, testing, priority and output. 52For blockchain opportunities, a UC canvas with five elements-task, data, partners, values and automation-is introduced, as well as a framework for the identification of blockchain opportunities. 53The UC technology mapping framework supports both business executives and IT experts and is demonstrated via an alpine rescue mission UC. 54 There are many methods and tools guiding companies that are proceeding with digitalization. 14For example, PlanDigital is a tool supporting the identification, evaluation and selection of digitalization ideas, and the data model of the tool has elements such as company, SWOT, business model, digitalization roadmap, digitalization idea, goal, user, user role and technology. 57Technology here refers to the information and communication technologies (ICT) that can be exploited when implementing digital, ICT-based solutions or services.Table 1 presents the elements of UC descriptions from four sources (title row).
The framework dimensions are taken from articles 51 and 55 being the most comprehensive.
A JO to be co-created with several complementary ICT providers is a business challenge and requires consideration before jumping in.The business model is not the only issue.The industrial challenge in hand, the readiness of ICT as well as the capabilities of potential co-creators need to be addressed.In section four the JOEF is presented and later applied in and industrial UC; DT for the process improvement of the pulp and paper industry.

Digital twin
DTs have been used since the 1970s in different contexts, and their generic model includes three parts: (i) physical products in real space (reality), (ii) virtual products in virtual space, and (iii) the connections of data and information that tie the virtual and real products together. 58A system can also be called a DT when it fulfils certain key criteria: "a model of the object, an evolving set of data relating to the object, and a means of dynamically updating or adjusting the model in accordance with the data." 59A DT aims to improve business processes and performance, 60 usually via maximizing quality and throughput while maintaining flexibility and reducing costs. 611][62][63] These viewpoints should be considered to select proper methods and tools to serve the challenge of industrial business on the selected level, for example, for operations on the factory floor, 64 sustainability assessment, 63 supply chain management, 60,61 or project management. 65Thus, the engineering of a useful DT requires a combination of competences as well as implementation skills.DT always are connecting engineering knowledge to business knowledge via enabling technologies such as IT, IoT, data analytics, AI, AR, VT, blockchains, cloud-edge collaboration, etc. 60,61

RESEARCH APPROACH AND METHODS
In the 20th century, the institutionalization of a rich variety of engineering design traditions and practices has emerged.Here, the broadening of the boundaries of the systems that engineers had to deal has been an important driver for novel approaches required by complex design processes of joint artefacts. 66In management studies, a design science approach is often linked to other qualitative approaches, such as action research, participatory case studies, academia-industry partnership, and constructive approaches.They all share the aim of joint problem-solving and bridging between theory and practice.In this study, the research process was based on the design science research methodology (DSRM) process presented by Peffers et al. 67 In other words, through the case studies, the practitioners and researchers strove to jointly build and evaluate a design science research artifact, that is, a JOEF.
Our research contributes to the existing literature by investigating the creation, delivery and capture of the business value of a JO, and it introduces a holistic evaluation framework for identifying and analyzing both the feasibility, potential and business value of JOs.Our underlying research question can be formulated as: Which viewpoints are mandatory to discover before co-creating a solution for a DT UC, being also a systems engineering dilemma?Which TA B L E 1 Common elements in four UC descriptions.

Framework viewpoint Publications
Terminology in 51 Terminology in 55  and companies. 6The next section describes the DT of the pulp and paper industry as the industrial UC and it is followed by our research process.

Use case description
A DT system engineering case from the pulp and paper domain was selected to validate the JOEF.Pulp and paper industry contributes to the sustainability goals for example by (i) decreasing the use of virgin material (wood) and chemicals and (ii) producing recyclable materials (from wood).The uneven quality of recycled paper causes challenges in the process.How to maintain the quality of end products with minimum dose of chemicals?In this case, the process with machines and measurement points already exists and the solution shall be built using the available data sources.Because of the complicated continuously running process and available measurement points the hybrid model was

•Contribution presented in this paper
F I G U R E 1 Methodology adopted for the research based on. 73gineering.9][70] Implementing such automatization approaches in engineering work requires technical development and the integration of competences from different disciplines.

Research process
Our research on the evaluation of JOs is challenge-driven, which means that scientific methods are used to find solutions to practical industrial challenges.The applied method is therefore in line with the principles of design science, 70 the ideas of design thinking innovation ecosystems 71 and business networks that address problem-solving as a source of innovation. 72Figure 1 shows the development process and the methods used in this study, which follow the six steps of the DSRM: problem identification and motivation, the definition of the objectives for a solution, design and development, demonstration, evaluation and communication. 73e problem was identified in an ecosystem † † project with UC owners and software service providers.It can be challenging for (small) IT providers to start co-creation without external funding because there may be serious risks; this motivated us to look for viewpoints and issues that could be tackled before co-creation towards a JO was started, but a literature review confirmed that this topic had not previously been addressed.The core topics on which we focus-JO, UC and DTwere defined in Chapter 2, and the literature review was also used to study and compare past and present evaluation methods and to examine various aspects of the decision-making processes in a collaboration network.The proposed JOEF was developed in the design and development phase (Figure 1) to illustrate the advantages of a JO.The design science approach emphasizes that the applicability of the developed solution should be validated and tested and its theoretical connections and research contribution examined and illustrated. 71Four hypothetical DT implementation approaches for a pulp and paper production plant were identified-greenfield plant design, retrofit process design, optimizations of on-line measurable objectives and optimization of offline measurable objectives 8 -and a JOEF was piloted using the on-line measurement approach.
The on-line approach was selected because it also reflects the needs of the industry.During the operating phase of a process plant, an ongoing aim is to optimize production in order to, for example, minimize costs or reduce quality variations.Some quality indicators can be measured online, and this online data can be used as input data for optimization.However, as the production processes are extremely complex systems, defining the correlations or dependencies between process parameters and outcomes, such as quality, sufficiently close to realtime to make usable metrics for operative decision-making requires additional analysis and models.DTs can be developed and integrated into the process control systems as soft sensors, and the automatization is related to model updating and may be, for example, based on machine learning.The overall solution hypothesis for the DT was a visual interface with our operators and engineers to dynamically adapt the process set points, and the background assumptions were for it to • be based on live data from various parts of the process (industrial IoT and sensor networks), • provide current state information (monitoring) and prediction (forecasting) of the process outcome, • be connected as an interface to the process set points, • gather all this information and functionality into a system, • have operators and engineers as its core users, and • have core functionalities related to adapting the process set points and information that is relevant thereto.
The data and inputs for the JOEF test were gathered at the SEED insight workshops (organized remotely), where the requirements of the DT UC were collected with subtitles such as (i) stakeholder and functional mapping, (ii) business requirements, (iii) user requirements, and (iv) technological requirements.There were at least 25 working meetings before the insight report was finalized and accepted by the UC owner.The working meetings included five user requirement interviews, at which the potential end users expressed their visions for the DT functionality and user interface (UI), and four business requirement interviews, at which the potential solution providers gave their insights into the co-creation of a DT solution (Table 2).The interviews were semi-structured, recorded and organized remotely via MS Teams.In order to verify the developed framework and to obtain further ideas for development, a workshop was held remotely on November 12, 2021, which was arranged and facilitated by the researchers, and at which were present four representatives from the companies and one researcher from the university (Table 3).At the beginning of the workshop, the researchers briefly introduced the evaluation framework that had been developed and then gathered feedback via a Miro board ‡ ‡ .
Feedback was also received regarding the DT UC to which the JOEF was applied.Lessons learned from the DT test and the findings from both the workshops and discussions with the companies' experts are presented in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5.

THE JOINT OFFERING EVALUATION FRAMEWORK
The developed JOEF has two sets of tools: (i) the JO Playbook and (ii) the Business Value Toolset (BVT) (Figure 2).The JO Playbook offers viewpoints and tools for IT solution providers that are considering the business potential and feasibility of collaboration and co-creation towards an industrial UC that cannot be delivered or sold by one com- provider with an identified industrial challenge to be solved, and the BVT is applicable to a group of potential offering companies when they jointly design, discuss and evaluate the business value of a potential JO.

Joint Offering Playbook
The Joint Offering Playbook currently has seven viewpoints: (i) UC, (ii) joint solution, (iii) the resources and skills needed to deliver the joint solution, (iv) partners, (v) business, (vi) contract, and (vii) outcome (bold rows in Table 4).Each of these viewpoints has at least one tool, canvas or checklist to help in making the decision to start or abandon co-creation of the JO.In each row in Table 4, the tool in the first column The viewpoints, tools and related questions of the Joint Offering Playbook.

Use case
Use case canvas Do you have a use case (an industrial challenge to which you would like to contribute but cannot deliver on your own)?
Stakeholder map Who are the users (main/primary, secondary, potential external) of this use case?

Joint solution
Need-Approach-Benefit-Competition (NABC) What are the needs, approaches, benefits and competitiveness of the conceived joint solution?
Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) of the joint solution What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the conceived joint solution?

Resources and skills needed to deliver the joint solution
Use case requirement resources Are all relevant resources available to define the requirements of this use case?
ICT skills and platforms Are all required ICT skills and platforms available?
Technological readiness level (TRL) of the components What is the TRL of each required component?

Partner identification
Are new partners needed?
Actions, resources and actors (ARA) analysis Are necessary actions, resources and actors available to co-create, deliver and sell?
Potential partners and their preconditions Do the partner candidates have complementary and necessary skills?
Trust in each potential partner How can the trustworthiness and reliability of partner candidates be estimated?
Validation of the integrator How will appropriate selection of the integrator be ensured?

Business
Business model and opportunity analysis using the Excel tool together with potential partners Is the expected business value acceptable?

Contract
Is the contract type (mutually) agreeable?
Work and fee allocation Is the work allocation fair?
Earning logic How will mutually sustainable earning logic be selected?

Outcome
Outcome and scalability Will the result be a joint offering and sufficiently scalable?

Summary
addresses the question stated in the second.The last line is used to summaries the viewpoints.When completed, the Playbook can then be used to create a map with each viewpoint marked green (GO), yellow (not relevant or not examined) or red (showstopper) (see later Table 8).
The UC canvas (Figure 3) presents our integration of the UC frameworks found in the literature (see Table 1).Strategic needs 55 are implemented as a SWOT analysis in the UC canvas, and the subject is the UC.Features 55 are handled within the data (sources), logic and solution, while the visions 55 are considered within the business goal, which is the starting point of the UC canvas.Threats are handled by the SWOT analysis; the more detailed threat analysis included in 51 is discarded here because it focuses on security monitoring in the financial sector.
The UC canvas (Figure 3) is the first tool in our playbook focusing on the UC to be solved.It includes two common tools-a stakeholder map and SWOT analysis-tuned for the purpose.The stakeholder analysis is used to determine the actual users and other interest groups.
The core stakeholders are the main and primary user groups or person roles.Direct stakeholders are the secondary users, who exploit and provide information while in-direct stakeholders include the potential external users that might be interested in the results or future exploitation.In addition to the common tools also the main engineering topics for the potential SW solution are included.
For the JO to be co-created, which is the dimension to be examined next, both the NABC 19 and SWOT 21 analyses are proposed.The NABC approach, as its acronym suggests, identifies the needs, approaches, benefits and competitors. 19Figure 4 shows the template for an NABC analysis with questions related to the UC introducing an industrial challenge.SWOT is a commonly exploited analysis canvas to clarify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a phenomenon to F I G U R E 3 UC canvas with titles and instructions.
F I G U R E 4 NABC template with use case-related questions.
be studied.In the JOEF, the focus of the SWOT analysis is the potential JO to be co-created.For the SWOT, another quadrant template having four fields is available in the JO playbook.
The third dimension of the JO Playbook-resources and skills needed-clarifies three topics: (i) resources for the UC requirements, (ii) ICT skills and platforms (Table 5), and (iii) the TRL of the components.Mandatory resources for the UC requirements are a business domain expert who understands the UC well, the UC owner (main customer) and a functional expert who understands the potential legacy interfaces.In addition to these three, two additional resources are recommended: a service designer, to ensure end-user involvement and design user interaction, and a facilitator, orchestrator or coach to drive the requirement definitions; the latter should be available later to guide agile development, lean processes or scrums for software development. 74ble 5 provides a checklist for ICT skills and platforms to be included when implementing the JO.For each row, you need to consider whether the feature is required, whether the technology is interoperable with current legacy systems and whether you (your company) can provide the skills.If the response to the last point is negative, you need to identify potential partners to fill the competence gap.
For the TRL analysis, the components, modules or technological building blocks need to be identified.For software, the TRLs are the principle (TRL 1); technology concept (TRL 2); proof-of-concept (PoC) (TRL 3); standalone prototype component (TRL 4); integrated prototype (TRL 5); demonstrated prototype with real-world integration (TRL 6); prototype with operational integration (TRL 7); qualified deployment (TRL 8); and mission-proven operational system. 22e fourth viewpoint of the Playbook (Table 4) is that of partners.
The Playbook cannot help to find partners, but they can most likely be identified from amongst existing collaborators, such as from (ongoing) jointly funded (ecosystem) projects, partners' partners or peers from clubs or alliances.When the list of potential partners has been created, it is worthwhile checking whether all actors and resources are available for the required activities, that is, conduct an ARA analysis. 20ust is essential when considering any joint action, and the first question in that regard is whether there is mutual trust from past experiences.If there are no past experiences, a proven track record of successful deliveries needs to be found, in addition to the financial status of the potential partner, which can be screened with questions like the following: • Is the company growing and internationalizing?Is it eligible for Others; if so, which?
• How much was the most recent year's profit?What is the annual percentage growth in profit?• How many employees does the company have?What is the annual percentage growth in personnel?
The integrator candidate criteria are even tighter.In addition to the basics, such as trust, financial status and track record, the integrator should bring expertise in the relevant domain, UC legacy systems, agile software development practices, service design, end-user involvement, cyber security other relevant technological skills, competences or platforms.In addition to these complementary skills, the integrator candidate should also propose a preliminary mutually agreeable idea for the collaboration agreement and fees.Table 6 summarizes the earning logic models, their strengths and their weaknesses as well as the risks for both solvers and UC owners.
When considering a joint action, it is necessary to estimate its outcome.Will the solution be a single (tailored) solution, a JO or even a scalable JO?If the result will be a single customized solution, the company must determine whether any new competences or domain understanding will be gained and whether there is potential for reusability in the sub-solutions to be developed.A JO suggests that the solution could be offered to the same domain nationally or internation-ally, but naturally, this has to be agreed with the UC owner.A scalable JO suggests that the joint solution can be offered to other domains nationally or internationally, again if the UC owner agrees.A scalability assessment has three dimensions-business, technology and human resources-each of which has several issues to consider (see Table 7).A summary map (Table 8) visualizes the integration of several dimensions, leaving room for decision-making.How many-if any-showstoppers can one have and still proceed?

Business Value Toolset
The identification and assessment of the business value of a JO is an especially demanding task because there are many partners whose needs, requirements and values need to be balanced.Thus, a multidimensional approach and different evaluation methods are typically required to ensure that the business objectives for the JO set by the collaborating actors are achieved.The BVT developed here in our research is particularly suitable for evaluating a JO in the early phases or even before kicking off its development.The BVT is a software prototype based on the approaches and tools of the playbook, including also the UC canvas as part of the toolset.In addition, the to be used in group decision-making, for example, during meetings to brainstorming and supporting discussions, and thus it provides an easyto-use IT tool for formulating and evaluating JOs in complex situations that feature a lot of uncertainties.
Figure 5 shows the landing page for the Toolset (developed with MS Excel and Visual Basic for Applications VBA).The starting point for applying the toolset can be one of two conditions: a perceived customer need for which co-operation between companies is required for full delivery or a common interest and desire to co-develop, with the aim of finding new business opportunities and additional options to generate business growth and more profit.In this context, the toolset provides insights and increases the understanding of value creation, delivery and capture mechanisms and of the assessment of the business potential and value of a JO from a collaboration network perspective.
The toolset comprises the following modules for business value creation, delivery and capture: • Collaboration goal and network: The main goal of the collaboration and the companies involved in the development of the JO is defined.The motives and synergy effects of the collaboration for the companies are also evaluated.• Business case for the JO: The specific business case for the JO is defined: customer; customer needs, wants, desires and pain points; expected outcome and solution; competition; and schedule.Generic customer-related information is also considered.
• Skills and competences: Generic and business case-specific skills as well as the technological competences needed for the JO's • Business opportunity analysis (Figure 6): Various aspects related to the business potential of the JO are identified and assessed: innovativeness, newness and market attractiveness of the JO; business environment; strategic aspects and synergy effects; business impacts (cost, benefits, risk); implementation feasibility (technological, service and process, financial); and collaboration benefits and challenges.The opportunity analysis is semi-quantitative by nature, using a scale from 1 to 5.
• JO scalability: Various aspects of business scalability and scalabilityrelated risk are identified and assessed: business aspects, technological aspects and human resources.The risk analysis is semiquantitative by design, and the impact and probability scale are from 1 to 5.
• Calculation parameters and contract type: A wide selection of contract types is available for the collaboration network to support the development of the JO and the sharing of cost, revenue and risk.
Basic calculation parameters for the economic assessment are the contract period, which is the number of years to be used in the evaluation; the currency unit for use when calculating the costs and benefits of the JO; and the discount rate, which typically refers to the required rate of return on the investment capital.
• Cost planning-CAPEX (capital expenditures) and OPEX (operating expenses): The cost breakdown structure is a way to recognize all relevant cost categories related to the JO that need to be evaluated.Costs are, to a large extent, specific to a business case.In this step, monetary values for the various costs (CAPEX, OPEX) of the JO for the calculation period are defined, valuated and discussed.
The values should be best estimates (e.g., estimates from previous similar cases, expert judgements, results of mathematical models).
Examples of CAPEX for digital solutions include site audit/pre-study, cloud software-as-a-service, licenses, installation, sensors, transferring legacy data to new systems, master data creation and updates, process reviews and configurations, integration and training.OPEX

FINDINGS
The findings are presented in two parts: first, the feedback gathered at the workshop with service providers, and second, the application of the JOEF to a DT UC for a pulp and paper company.

Workshop results
At the beginning of the JOEF feedback workshop, the tools and methods included in the JOEF were briefly described, and the participants were then asked to prioritize the content and tools based on their view and understanding of the feasibility and usefulness of the JOEF in their own companies and organizations.This was done using gold, silver and bronze stars to tag the most relevant sections, and the BVT was chosen as the most interesting part of the JOEF, followed by the preconditions and trustfulness of partners; the Playbook as a whole and the UC shared third position (see Table 9 and Figure 7).
In the feedback discussion, all the parties emphasized domain understanding.An understanding of the customer's problem and enduser involvement in the requirements definition are necessary, 75,76 and Joint Offering Playbook 1 3 Use case 1 3

Skills and competences 1 2
Customer benefits 2 2 Cost planning 1 1 it was noted that customer benefits were not yet implemented in the version of the Toolset available on the day of the workshop.Contract model, mutually agreeable earning logic and IPR 77 were also identified as topics of high interest.
All participants expected both co-creation and initiatives for JOs to increase within their companies in the near future and believed that JOs would enable huge business opportunities and synergies.At the end of the feedback workshop, the participants reported that the time investment in the workshop was beneficial, and all three companies expressed interest in piloting the JOEF and were eager to obtain it as soon as possible for further exploitation.

Application with a digital twin use case
The JOEF, particularly the UC canvas, was tested with a DT UC based on the optimization of online measurable objectives for a pulp and paper enterprise (Figure 8).The stakeholder map (Figure 9) identifies  Unfortunately, all seven viewpoints could not have been applied because of the UC owner company could not make their decision to continue with the investment.Thus, this research covers only the UC canvas with a stakeholder map and SWOT and NABC analyses.
The expected business benefits of the DT are related to quality improvements, increased productivity in both process output and operator efficiency, cost savings and sustainability goals.In more detail, this means • improved and stabilized product quality (brightness, yield, minimized variation, minimized loss of production due to the quality of the raw material), better delivery reliability, improved customer experience and revenue growth opportunities; • improved process runnability, decreased chemical and water usage and thus a less harmful environmental impact; • more effective process runnability, energy savings and thus a less harmful environmental impact; • reduced need for virgin raw material; • increased transparency (e.g., carbon footprint); • increased knowledge of the process and how to develop it further; and • support for personnel: support for daily routines, ease of use, time to focus on other efforts and fewer human errors.
It is clear that the UC owner will own the models created for their processes, although maintenance and modifications will often require the help of the original DT model developers.Core stakeholders are the real main users of the UC, not the developers of the solution, even in case of a complicated DT. Figure 10 presents the SWOT analysis of the DT UC to be co-created.

DISCUSSION
The JOEF includes various tools and methods and is aimed at decisionmaking situations in which a company or companies are trying to determine the feasibility of a JO to be co-created for a UC.Nevertheless, the JOEF may not be able to address all possible phenomena related to the co-creation of a JO for solving an industrial challenge.
During this study, the JOEF was tested with only one hypothetical, though realistic, DT UC in the pulp and paper industry.In this industrial challenge, there were several optional implementation approaches as usual in real systems engineering cases.To cover those, several threads of JOEF should have been investigated.Although time-consuming, that kind of exercise might help to identify the most feasible approach to be co-created with the partners.
The JOEF includes seven viewpoints, such as UC, joint solution, resources and skills needed to deliver the joint solution, partner, business, contract, and outcome.A summary  and service provider; and finally (iv) the end users of the DT implementation, such as equipment and system developers, process or system owners and process operators (Figure 11). 8Using the JOEF before initiating a collaboration towards a JO might help such heterogeneous companies in their decision-making.
From the business perspective, the expected opportunities result from the faster execution of the engineering process, fewer human errors in that process, a longer model lifetime and the possibility of new DT product offerings (Table 10).This indicates that the development and deployment of such DT-based work processes can both save costs and increase revenues.
The use of the JOEF with a DT UC highlighted some common problems.Data ownership is one such topic; if the plant has several subsystems with various service providers, is the necessary data available for the DT?The ownership of the logic or intelligence of the DT also needs to be resolved; if the DT is established and running at the site, how can the external developers access it?Usually, plants do not allow interactions with their control systems from outside the plant.In addition to these ownership and intellectual property rights issues, the business model also has to be acceptable to all solution providers, and small companies especially need to establish the earning logic and payback time carefully.The assessment of the final output also needs to The overall solution can be provided by the network of actors or by an engineering company alone.
be considered, and in the optimal case, the output is scalable, even to international markets and other industrial domains.
The BVT covers business value (i) creation and delivery and (ii) capture, but it does yet not cover the customer value proposition.It helps in (i) defining the business model for JOs, (ii) understanding the mechanisms and benefits of JOs, (iii) understanding the business opportunities and risks of JOs, and (iv) estimating the revenue potential, cost impact and investment needed through simple calculations.

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we described the JOEF comprising the Joint Offering Playbook and the Business Value Tool (BVT).The JO Playbook starts with identifying the industrial challenges of the UC owner, then proceeds to discover the feasibility of co-creation with various tools, checking whether the required actors are included, verifying the trust between the partners and proposing a framework for the earning logic and payback time before ending with a summary table with go/not relevant/showstopper values.The BVT introduces specific figures and the assessment of business value creation, capture and assessment, and the JOEF thus supports the JO's definition, its work and role allocation and the decision-making within the collaboration network of the developer companies.Our research arose from the fact that there is no commonly agreed framework in the literature that could be directly applied when assessing the business potential and value of a potential JO.By applying the JOEF, the overall revenue and cost implications of a JO can be analyzed and estimated, and the JOEF also allows the identification and definition of the most promising and feasible business models for use by the collaboration network.Practically, the JOEF helps companies to consider relevant aspects related to the JO before any decisions are taken, and the JOEF can therefore be easily applied to the assessment of different types of JOs.The JOEF framework was developed in cooperation between research scientists and industrial partners who brought their expertise and competence to the development.In conclusion, the expected benefits of the JOEF for collaboration networks are that it • provides structured and transparent information to support decision-making and thus reduces decision uncertainty, • supports expert group discussions in meetings, • provides baselines for identifying and measuring the benefits of JOs, • guides the establishment of a sustainable collaboration network, • increases understanding of the economic relations and opportunities of JOs, and • supports the creation of new business.
We consider the JOEF Playbook and Toolset to provide an easy-toapply assessment method to support the development of JOs from a business perspective.Nevertheless, we need to note the limitations of this study.The validation of the evaluation framework is based on a single feedback workshop with service provider companies and with a limited number of participants, and the application was created at the researchers' desk based on experience and insight gathered during more than 25 working sessions (Table 2) while working towards the DT UC for the process industry in a real systems engineering dilemma.
In this research, all seven viewpoints of JOEF could not have been applied because of the decision-making delays in the UC owner company.Still, two out of seven viewpoints were carried out with the DT UC.For the business viewpoint, several partner candidates would be requested to enable the discussion with the BVT implemented in excel.Also, the contract viewpoint will claim partners to finalize.
To enable further research, we are looking for UCs willing to exploit the JOEF to help in deciding whether to initiate collaborations with partners and to co-create scalable, mutually sustainable joint solutions for international markets.We plan to continue with the framework, and we are looking for opportunities for case studies and look forward to encapsulating the framework as a service.Also, it would be interesting to revalidate a historic JO in the future, that is, try to re-engineer the reasoning for the failure or success of a JO.
selected for the DT.An interesting research question was if the process could be modelled well enough from the piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID).In a process industry and engineering context, further specifications for the definition of DTs have been presented, such as the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0 † ), which was developed as part of Industry 4.0 work ‡ .RAMI 4.0 follows the life-cycle phases of process industry systems (design, build, operate), and the key differences between the generic definition and this context-specific definition are that (i) the physical object or product in the engineering context changes, depending on the life-cycle phase, from a design artifact to a real processing plant; (ii) the dataset describing the physical object evolves with different time scales, depending on the phase; and (iii) the purpose of the virtual counterpart shifts from supporting design decision-making to supporting more operative decision-making.Due to this last difference, the models (i.e., digital counterparts) may not be useful in all life-cycle phases.Many technical approaches are available and under development, both for data-driven and phenomena-based process DTs.The main area of development is likely the hybrid or multiscale modelling space in which different techniques, data and/or phenomena are combined to extract the best of their features while avoiding their challenging features.As for any DT, the development and maintenance of the digital counterparts is normally manual.Some work has been done to support automatization of model development, such as the DEXPI § Initiative and CAPE-OPEN standard, which have been developed and maintained by CO-LaN** and mainly focus on developing universal languages for data transfer between digital systems in

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Working meetings with industry during the research.The intensive work was conducted during 2 months in spring 2021.working sessions were truly interactive: led and facilitated by researchers digging for input from the UC owners.Although the sessions were remote the mutual understanding was shared on-line with the Miro 7 online board.

TA B L E 3 2
Participants at the JOEF feedback workshop.The Joint Offering Evaluation Framework (JOEF) includes both the Joint Offering (JO) Playbook and the Business Value Toolset (BVT).pany alone.The BVT evaluates and illustrates the business value of a JO from the viewpoints of (i) creation and delivery and (ii) capture and assessment.The JO Playbook and BVT are tightly interconnected because some items defined in the Playbook are used as input to the Toolset.The JO Playbook is the starting point for a single IT solution

F I G U R E 5
Business Value Toolset (BVT) landing page.TA B L E 8 Summary of the JO Playbook.defined.The key technological competences of each participating company are also identified.
may include system upkeep, ongoing training, further development, enhancements and other ongoing services and additional work.• Cost and revenue sharing: Cost-sharing is about distributing the contributions and risks of the joint development, with the understanding that the JO is expected to create benefits for the individual companies.Revenue sharing is an important management activity because each company that contributes to a JO should profit from it in order to establish the right incentive.The tool provides support for discussing, evaluating and defining the cost and revenue shares for each partner; percentages of the total are used, and monetary values are calculated.If monetary values are not used, person-months can be substituted.The results from the BVT are summarized and presented in both numerical and graphical forms.CAPEX, OPEX and revenues for the JO and the scores for the different key business and performance F I G U R E 6 Business opportunity analysis-main factors to be assessed: the joint solution, synergies and business impacts of the network and implementation and collaboration in the network.This is a sample of the graphical UI in the software prototype developed on top of MS Excel.indicators are calculated.The aim of the summary document, which the toolset generates automatically, is to present the results in such a way that the outcomes and implications of the assessment can be clearly understood.By using the toolset, a common understanding of the JO from different viewpoints can be created before decisions are made, enhancing the transparency of decision-making, increasing knowledge of the value creation related to the JO and supporting the working group processes.

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Most interesting tools and titles of the JOEF according to the workshop participants.

F I G U R E 7
Feedback activity on the Miro board: place a gold star on the most interesting section, silver on the second and bronze on the third.F I G U R E 8Use case (UC) canvas for the digital twin (DT) use case (UC) from the pulp and paper industry.

F I G U R E 9
Stakeholder map for the digital twin (DT) use case (UC) from the pulp and paper industry.themain and primary user groups or person roles, the secondary users, who would exploit and provide information, and potential external users who might be interested in the results or future exploitation.Outside the circles, there are machine and equipment providers, spare parts suppliers and maintenance and service providers that could also have an interest in collaborating in the development or operation phases of the DT, and future DTs could be transparent with machine or equipment providers, spare parts suppliers and service providers.

F I G U R E 1 0
SWOT of the digital twin (DT) use case (UC) from the pulp and paper industry.FI G U R E 1 1The technical layers and stakeholders of a DT-based process engineering solution business system.R&D, research and development, SW, software; UI, user interface.58playbook acts as a checklist and guides to review all seven viewpoints: UC, joint solution, resources and skills needed to deliver the joint solution, partners, business, contract, and outcome.To implement a DT-based solution, several technical layers and stakeholders need to be integrated and engaged as usual in any systems engineering case.The development of a DT is a likely potential JO case that involves at least (i) data management platform providers; (ii) software, tool, UI and systems developers; (iii) a DT main user, developer

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Models of earning logic and payback time.Three dimensions of scalability assessment.
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