Digital Twins — Bridging the Digital and Physical Worlds (White Paper)

Introduction

With the rapid pace of technological growth, businesses are working on developing solutions that can manage and analyze data from modern devices and systems. Today’s leading technology companies, such as IBM and Microsoft, are placing their focus on a concept known as digital twins — the digital representations of physical objects or systems. By implementing digital twins, companies can plan, manage and execute a complex set of activities in a virtual world before launching them to the real world, where they become more complicated to fix.

Digital twins are improving innovation in a digitally-transforming environment, and this makes them receive interest in industries like manufacturing, transportation and retail. They act as virtual mirrors of real-world systems, and they allow users to gain insight into how a particular system behaves under a variety of simulated conditions. The latter helps reduce maintenance issues because a proposed fix for a problem can be tested on the digital twin before it can be applied to a physical object. Moreover, implementing digital twins helps optimize business operations and energy consumption to maximize value and impact.

When combined with analytics, the digital twin concept can deliver insights that can unlock hidden value for a particular organization. Digital twins further help improve product performance and prevent unplanned downtime by providing information on the potential failures of devices. All the lessons learned from a digital twin can be applied to the original system with reduced risk and a lot more return on investment. By turning to digital twins, companies can adopt business models that meet customers’ demands for personalized experiences and products.

24% of organizations that either have Internet of Things (IoT) technology solutions or IoT projects in progress already use digital twins; another 42% plan to use digital twins by 2022, according to a 2019 report by Gartner.

Why Is It the Right Time to Develop Digital Twin Solutions?

In the modern-day, businesses are under mounting pressure than ever before to deliver results and react to the ever-changing market landscapes. Disruptive and competitive threats are constantly reshaping service and product expectations, whereby consumers demand products and services of high quality and greater flexibility. The global cost and trade pressures are presenting risks that require efficient and agile operational processes for businesses to compete at blazing speed.

Due to the looming skilled labor shortage, companies are forced to rethink their strategies of empowering frontline workers so that they remain productive. To achieve optimal business operations, such companies need the right form of tools that can safely and efficiently train employees. Companies are turning to digital transformation and are exploring various forms of technologies to try to address such challenges. However, these businesses are generating large amounts of data in the process, and this gives way to a new set of technology-based business challenges that still need to be addressed.

New technologies like augmented reality (AR) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are creating and demanding vast amounts of data from disparate sources — making it important for companies to develop strategies that can integrate informational and operational technology. Businesses have recognized the need to integrate this data but have been struggling with developing the right forms of effective strategies for doing it.

Fighting climate change is one of the prime reasons that sectors such as the built environment need to alter their operation strategies. According to the World Green Building Council, building and construction account for 39% of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. For this reason, construction companies need to adopt solutions that can help optimize operations while reducing pollution.

Automotive companies need efficient systems that can help test the operational data of new proposed vehicle models. The healthcare industry needs resources that can help with performing medical procedures safely and risk-free.

By introducing digital twins, businesses can gain valuable insights by exploring the relationship between interrelated data sets of the physical and digital worlds. This can ultimately help address all of the aforementioned problems.

Solutions

Digital twins introduce advanced ways of asset management which offer valuable solutions for businesses. They enhance efficiency and reduce product quality issues. Since digital twins are connected to their real-world counterpart, they present a plethora of use cases and benefits. They can be used to train employees by recreating real-life hazardous situations. They can further be used to train employees to handle equipment that is not physically close or would be too costly to be offered for hands-on training. By turning to digital twin solutions, developments can be carried out in a more data- and customer-driven way. Listed below are the benefits that digital twins present in various industries:

Construction

Digital twins of buildings deliver dynamic 3D models that show real-life performance using real-time data. This can deliver resource-efficiency, cost savings and an effective way of fighting pollution.

Automotive

To help analyze and improve vehicle performance, digital twins are used for creating virtual replicas of vehicles. These virtual vehicle replicas help collect behavioral and operational data of their physical counterparts. They also help in implementing and testing new product models, including electric and hybrid vehicles.

Manufacturing

In manufacturing, digital twins help enhance operations and reduce maintenance costs. Manufacturers first create a virtual representation of an asset and then capture its data to determine its real-world performance and operating conditions.

Healthcare

Creating digital twins of an organ or a patient enables doctors to safely perform procedures in a simulated environment. Digital twins are also used by healthcare professionals to conduct virtual clinical trials before launching new vaccines or drugs.

Aerospace and Defense

Digital twins are used in the aerospace and defense sectors to improve product designs and enhance performance. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) uses digital twins to maintain, operate and repair aircraft systems located in outer space. The U.S. military uses digital twins to confirm the integrity of the semiconductors and chips used in its ammunition.

Retail

In the retail sector, digital twins play a crucial role in augmenting customer experiences by creating virtual twins for customers. Such digital twins can deliver custom experiences for users, and can further help in better in-store planning and optimal energy management.

Success Stories

To highlight the effectiveness of digital twins, the following three success stories have been compiled for the various companies mentioned:

• Stara — an innovative agricultural machinery company — increased the efficiency of its tractor manufacturing processes by implementing digital twin technology. It developed in-depth insights into the performance of its equipment by using sensors that are directly connected to its digital twin interface. This has given the company the opportunity to monitor performance and spot defects and inefficiencies to allow for more accurate functioning of machinery.
• Kaesar Compressors — the manufacturers of compressed air and vacuum products — moved from simply providing air compression devices to providing a fully-developed service that involves the installation, maintenance and monitoring of air compression devices. The company’s digital twin technology further allows for monitoring the life cycle of devices and tracking their performance.
• Amazon uses digital twins to provide a tailored, custom experience to its users with its marketing adverts. For every product viewed, purchased or added to a virtual basket by the user, Amazon’s digital twin algorithm creates a digital version of the consumer. As their algorithm gets fed with more data, their digital replica of the user becomes more accurate and offers a seamless customer experience.

“When you take a minute to consider all the ways digital twins could be useful for businesses, it’s easy to see how the potential for this technology is just about limitless.”

— Bernard Marr, internationally bestselling author and strategic adviser to companies and governments.

Conclusion

Digital twins are showing significant transformation in various industries like manufacturing, automotive, healthcare and retail. When properly implemented, digital twins will continue to deliver insights that can help unlock organizations’ hidden values. By turning to these new-age technologies, organizations can change their stand-alone systems to integrated networks that use greater data analytics and computer capabilities. By having a smart connected product with its virtual representation, ample business goals can be achieved risk-free and efficiently.

A significant benefit of having digital twins is that they eliminate the need for multiple prototypes, reduce total development time and improve final product quality. Because of their many benefits, digital twins are presenting disruptive threats as they are finding their way across a wide variety of industries. This trend will accelerate as the cost of sensors used in digital twins declines and the technology becomes even more cost-effective for smaller companies to develop.

Businesses that adopt this technology early will be able to incorporate interactive features to improve employee satisfaction and productivity. For stakeholders to prepare their businesses for digital twins, they need to clearly identify the goals and objectives of their business, build a smart technology ecosystem and create data-driven analytics models. To prosper and tackle both disruptive and competitive forces in the new age, businesses need to redefine their value propositions and act quickly to adopt digital twin solutions.