Manufacturers all over the world have been under pressure to meet emerging challenges in an environment with limited resources. The prominent setbacks for the manufacturing industry include supply chain shortages and talent gaps. However, the advent of digital twin technology serves as the best example of how technological innovation can shape the future of manufacturing. Digital twins can not only enhance capacity but also ensure more efficiency and resiliency in manufacturing operations.
The growing demand for fast-paced and continuous operations in manufacturing creates various limitations. Digital twins offer virtual representations of production lines, equipment or the whole factory to help manufacturers with more effective decision-making. Manufacturers must know about the utility of digital twins and how they can unlock untapped value to prepare factories of the future.
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Understanding the Digital Twin Technology
The foremost highlight in any introduction to digital twins will focus on their definition. The most common answers to ‘what is digital twin technology’ paint them as virtual representations of physical objects or systems. Digital twins use real-time data to imitate the behavior, conditions and performance of their physical counterparts. Digital twins help with continuous monitoring and analysis of objects, systems or products throughout their complete lifecycle. In addition, digital twins can also feature external processes and crucial variables that can influence the performance of real-world assets.
One of the significant highlights of digital twins is that they work with data flowing between the object and its virtual representation in real-time. The two-way flow of data ensures the most accurate simulations of the physical world. Businesses can also use multiple digital twins together to create models for more complex systems, aimed at a larger digital transformation strategy.
Digital twins provide a clear impression of how something works and predicts its behavior in future scenarios. As a result, they can help in accelerating innovation and improving efficiency along with making well informed decisions. You can come across use cases of digital twins in predictive maintenance, product development, supply chain optimization and process optimization.
Breaking Down the Architecture of Digital Twins
If you want to capitalize on the power of digital twins in diverse use cases, then it is important to know their architecture. You can find digital twin providers like IBM, Microsoft, General Electric and Siemens with solutions that provide a comprehensive suite of services. The digital twin examples may feature hardware layers, synchronization services, data processors and other tools to draw the most accurate simulations of real objects and processes. However, awareness of the architecture of digital twins can help you figure out exactly what you need to make the most of the innovative technology.
1. Physical Asset
The physical asset in digital twins can be any real-world object, process or system that you want to study or monitor within virtual environments.
2. Virtual Model
The virtual model in digital twins is the digital representation of the physical asset that you want to know more about.
3. Data Sources
One of the notable highlights in the answers to ‘what is a digital twin’ points at the two-way flow of data between the physical asset and the virtual model. Data sources are an integral component in digital twin architecture as they ensure accuracy in virtual representations. Internet of Things or IoT devices serve as data sources by recording relevant metrics for creating digital twins.
4. Data Pipelines
Data pipelines are used for transmitting sensor data to the virtual model in real time. They play a vital role in ensuring that the digital twin is synchronized with the physical asset.
5. Feedback Loop
The feedback loop helps in sending control signals or insights from the virtual model to the physical asset. It serves as a promising component for optimizing performance and efficiency alongside enhancing decision-making.
6. Analytics Engine
Digital twins needs an analytics engine running on AI or machine learning to detect patterns and facilitate predictive analytics. The functionalities of the analytics engine helps in drawing accurate simulations alongside offering support for effective asset tracking.
7. Visualization Dashboard
The visualization dashboard is another crucial component that completes the digital twin definition by providing access to the virtual representation. You can use the visualization dashboard to interact with the two-dimensional or 3D representation of the physical asset.
Breaking Down the Working Mechanism of Digital Twins
The uses of digital twins can vary by huge margins across different industries and applications. You must also know that digital twins follow some common steps that you will find in every example.
1. Data Collection
Organizations can start their digital twin projects by embedding sensors on a physical object to capture its performance, operating environment and condition. The digital twin meaning in case of IoT applications revolves around using smart objects that feature in-built sensors to collect and share data continuously. In the case of IT environments, teams can create digital representations of computers, applications and software with virtualization technologies. Subsequently, the teams can use software agents to collect data from the digital asset for supporting the digital twin.
2. Creation of the Virtual Model
The primary focus of digital twins aligns with the creation of digital replicas of certain objects or systems. Virtual modeling involves using the data collected from the physical asset to create a digital model. It is important to define digital twins with key attributes that help them offer realistic reactions to variables. The variables can refer to interactions with the physical asset or its environmental conditions. The attention to virtual modeling ensures that digital twins can offer reliable and accurate simulation of the responses of the physical assets in different conditions.
3. Real-Time Data Integration
You cannot think of a digital twin without live data integration as it ensures continuous communication between the digital twin and physical asset in real time. Live data integration offers a dynamic feedback loop that can help organizations with performance optimization and enhancements in system reliability. The two-way data exchange also helps in efficient predictive maintenance by anticipating issues ahead of time. Most of the organizations automate the real-time data exchange process to focus on more critical and strategic tasks.
4. Analysis and Decision-Making
Digital twins offer the most promising solutions to experiment safely within virtual environments. You find better answers to ‘how do digital twins work’ in manufacturing plants where digital twins can help in finding out how an upgrade may affect efficiency and performance. The best thing here is that manufacturers don’t have to implement the upgrade directly to measure its impact. On top of it, analytics engines used in digital twins can recommend operational changes to make the changes more cost-effective.
Variants of Digital Twins
Most of the discussions about digital twins don’t emphasize the fact that you can find different types of digital twins. Organizations can deploy different variants of digital twins in one production environment with the advantage of learning from different levels of physical assets.
1. Product Twins
Product twins refer to the virtual representations of products after the ideation stage or throughout the complete lifecycle. You can use product digital twins for design improvements, enhancing service satisfaction and manufacturing efficiency.
2. Process Twins
The variety of digital twin applications also draws attention towards the use of process twins that help in understanding how different systems work with each other. Process twins offer visualization of the interactions between systems and suggest actionable feedback to improve quality standard or process speed.
3. Part Twins
Part twins or component twins focus on the most granular level of larger systems. The primary goal of part twins revolves around measuring the insights from basic components of larger systems. Component twins serve a promising role in understanding the performance of certain components and identifying larger problems before they happen.
4. Place Twins
The largest deployment of digital twins can happen in the form of place twins. You can find examples of place twins in factory twins, which simulate a complete physical location or place. In some cases, you may assume similarities between process twins and place twins. However, place twins also include spatial data, such as climate, context and temperature of the physical location.
Unraveling the Use Cases of Digital Twins
Organizations in different industries leverage digital models to understand complex systems and promote innovation. Digital models have also proved as the most useful tools for efficient optimization and predictive equipment maintenance. You can find a digital twin use case in almost every major industry with widespread applications.
1. Construction of Physical Structures
Digital twins can prove to be the most useful tools for engineers to design durable and safe physical structures, such as buildings, bridges and dams. For example, digital twins can help engineers determine whether a specific design for a bridge can enhance its durability. As a result, engineers can identify any setbacks and make changes in the design before starting construction.
2. Healthcare
Another promising area where digital twins can offer significant advantages is in the domain of healthcare. Digital twins can come up with crucial insights from forecasts of disease progression to identify how patients will respond to different treatment options. Furthermore, healthcare professionals can use digital twins to enhance diagnosis through detailed modeling that helps in understanding how interactions between organs can affect health.
3. Urban Planning
You can also notice the benefits of digital twins in urban planning applications, especially for traffic supervision. City models use spatial data, IoT object data and AI analytics to determine how new transportation systems or infrastructure upgrades will affect the city’s environment and traffic. Digital twins serve a pivotal role in planning for smart cities and urban planning experts aim to tap into their power to enhance sustainability and quality of life.
Identifying the Advantages of Digital Twin Technology
The use cases of digital twins across different industries reveal their potential to revolutionize digital transformation. You can notice how digital twins offer more visibility into complex systems while opening doors for experimentation without real-world changes. An overview of their advantages can help you understand how they can unlock the future.
1. Faster Research and Development
How do you think a business can step into the future ahead of time? Without research and development, companies cannot experiment with new product designs, manufacturing processes or workflows. The advantages of digital twins make it easier to experiment within a virtual environment, thereby opening the doors for accelerated innovation. Digital twins offer a more cost-effective and safer approach to research and development without the need for real tests.
2. Scalability
Companies can stay competitive in the modern business landscape only by adapting to changes in product demand, customer priorities and economic conditions. Digital twins offer virtual environments where you can adjust parameters and test configurations safely before full-scale deployment. You can also connect digital twins to live systems and ensure that they can continuously transmit their scaling adjustments in real time to the physical asset.
3. Operational Efficiency
The next crucial outcome of digital twin technology is the assurance of enhanced operational efficiency. Digital twins can provide the insights required to achieve operational efficiencies throughout the value chain. Organizations can use different datasets to collect real-time data on physical asset and production performance. With more visibility into the asset or process bottlenecks, digital twins can help in crafting potential solutions.
Final Thoughts
The progressive use of digital twins is a perfect example of how the world is welcoming innovation and preparing for the future. Digital twins provide the easiest solution to multiple problems that affect efficiency, cost-effectiveness and productivity in different industries. With the help of virtual models that mimic real-world assets, companies can reinvent their manufacturing, services and internal management.
Mindpath is one of the leading destinations for digital twin app development with years of expertise in end-to-end IT solution development. We are proud to have team members who are eager to learn and specialize in new technologies, including digital twins. Our experts are familiar with the use of popular tech stacks for digital twin development in alignment with your business goals. Consult with our team and build your first digital twin right now.
