What Is Digital Twin Technology - And Why Is It So Important?
While the concept of a digital twin has been
around since 2002, it’s only thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT) that it has
become cost-effective to implement. And, it is so imperative to business today,
it was named one of Gartner’s
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017.
Quite simply, a digital twin is a virtual
model of a process, product, or service. This pairing of the virtual and
physical worlds allows analysis of data and monitoring of systems to head off
problems before they even occur, prevent down time, develop new opportunities,
and even plan for the future by using simulations.
Thomas Kaiser, SAP Senior Vice President of
IoT, put it this way: “Digital twins are becoming a business imperative,
covering the entire lifecycle of an asset or process and forming the foundation
for connected products and services. Companies that fail to respond will be
left behind.”
How does a digital twin work?
Think of a digital twin as a bridge between
the physical and digital world.
First, smart components that use sensors to
gather data about real-time status, working condition, or position are
integrated with a physical item. The components are connected to a cloud-based
system that receives and processes all the data the sensors monitor. This input
is analyzed against business and other contextual data.
Lessons are learned and opportunities are
uncovered within the virtual environment that can be applied to the physical
world — ultimately to transform your business.
Pairing technology pioneered in aerospace
NASA was the first to dabble with pairing
technology — the precursor to today’s digital twin — as far back as the early
days of space exploration.
How
do you operate, maintain, or repair systems when you aren’t within physical
proximity to them? That was the challenge NASA’s research department had to
face when developing systems that would travel beyond the ability to see or
monitor physically. And when disaster struck Apollo 13, it was the innovation
of mirrored systems still on earth that allowed engineers and astronauts to
determine how they could rescue the mission. Today, NASA uses digital twins to
develop new recommendations, roadmaps, and next-generation vehicles and
aircraft.
“The ultimate vision for the digital twin is
to create, test and build our equipment in a virtual environment,” says John
Vickers, NASA’s leading manufacturing expert and manager of NASA’s National
Center for Advanced Manufacturing. “Only when we get it to where it performs to
our requirements do we physically manufacture it. We then want that physical
build to tie back to its digital twin through sensors so that the digital twin
contains all the information that we could have by inspecting the physical
build.”
Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan first wrote
of the concept using the digital twin terminology in 2002. Today, machine
intelligence and connectivity to the cloud allows us unprecedented potential
for large-scale implementation of digital twin technology for companies in a
variety of industries.
Why is digital twin technology important?
Digital twins are powerful masterminds to
drive innovation and performance. Imagine it as your most talented product
technicians with the most advanced monitoring, analytical, and predictive
capabilities at their fingertips. By 2018, companies who invest in digital twin
technology will see a 30 percent improvement in cycle times of critical
processes, predicts IDC.
There will be billions of things represented
by digital twins within the next five years. These proxies of the physical
world will lead to new collaboration opportunities among physical world product
experts and data scientists whose jobs are to understand what data tells us
about operations.
Digital twin technology helps companies
improve the customer experience by better understanding customer needs, develop
enhancements to existing products, operations, and services, and can even help
drive the innovation of new business.
For example, GE’s “digital wind farm” opened
up new ways to improve productivity. GE uses the digital environment to inform
the configuration of each wind turbine prior to construction. Their goal is to
generate 20 percent gains in efficiency by analyzing the data from each turbine
that is fed to its virtual equivalent.
“For every physical asset in the world, we
have a virtual copy running in the cloud that gets richer with every second of
operational data,” says Ganesh Bell, chief digital officer and general manager
of Software & Analytics at GE Power & Water.
All indications seem to predict we are on the
cusp of a digital twin technology explosion. More companies will learn of
real-world and pilot program success stories and will want to deploy their very
own digital twins to gain a competitive advantage.
Source | https://www.forbes.com/
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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