The digital twins of production systems are one of the pillars of the Indus-try of the Future. Despite numerous on-going research and development initiatives the verification and validation of the digital twin remains a major scientific obstacle. This work proposes a simulation-based approach to achieve this goal: support Digital Twin verification and validation through the definition of a dedicated framework. A simulation model is used in place of the real-world system for ensuring the digital twin behaves as expected and for assessing its proper interoperability with the system to be twinned with. Then the simulation model is replaced by the real-world sys-tem, to interoperate with the verified and validated digital twin. With such an approach, the interoperability middleware, i.e. the IoT between the sys-tem and its digital twin can also be modeled, simulated, verified and vali-dated. Consequently, an optimized solution can be built for an entire value chain, from the system to its digital twin and conversely. © 2022 CEUR-WS. All rights reserved.