Digital Twins? - not as easy as it sounds
David Thomson
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David Thomson
Product Director with Digital Marine & Platform Focus | AI IoT, XR and PLM | AVEVA, IBM, Gravity Sketch Alumni
Product Information Model, Product Lifecycle Management, Building Information Modelling, Digital Asset, Digital Twin.
These terms have the same underlying principle in mind - create a detailed computer or digital representation of a product or asset and extract as much value from it as possible.
However as the article below from Engineering.com points out this is no easy feat, which is why we (industry) has been trying to achieve this for decades. In my 20 years experience in the industry I have learned some of the practical ways of getting there:
- Develop a common language for information between all stake holders, this can be a taxonomy, a class library etc. but share and manage it.
- Manage the data not the documents - the quicker industry gets away form documents the better data is the source of the information and thus the thing that needs to be under change management.
- As-build the CAD models - i.e. make an accurate 3D model, not just one that is good enough to produce drawings from, capture as much as is practical possible to capture the different configurations of the product/asset and maintain it. Reality capture now plays an increasing role here.
- Deliver a simple common model for all project participants - the shared model or the common data source needs to be really easy to put together and really easy to ensure it is accurate and up to date , achieving this is where most organisations fail, and often as the surrounding functionality of change management, collaboration , configuration etc gets in the way.
- Define ownership and responsibility of data up front. - The reality is that any digital model will change hands throughout the lifecycle. Who owns it and who maintains it needs to be defined upfront , as do the needs on the information model . Usually this needs to be handed over in a progressive way, think of a relay race where the baton is the digital model/twin.
- Make sure the digital twin is accessible - this use to be all about accessing the data on a browser but today this is more about APIs and inter-connectivity into an ecosystem.
https://www.engineering.com/PLMERP/ArticleID/16272/Digital-Twins-Beware-of-Naive-Faith-in-Simplicity.aspx
Product Director with Digital Marine & Platform Focus | AI IoT, XR and PLM | AVEVA, IBM, Gravity Sketch Alumni
6 年These days I would add : Use scanned models where building CAD is cost prohibitive but make them intelligent. i.e. tag the point clouds or mesh so that objects can be identified within .
Product Director with Digital Marine & Platform Focus | AI IoT, XR and PLM | AVEVA, IBM, Gravity Sketch Alumni
7 年thanks for the compliment Jeff Stroh that means a lot coming from someone who has to make this real in their day to day job.
Senior business leader, leveraging project experience and digital skills to deliver value-add solutions to improve project delivery performance.
7 年Good article David. You've highlighted some of the key challenges as well as areas were the industry could do more to collaborate together between the software side, EPCs, and owner-operator. Recognition that an asset lasts through many different "owners" going all the way back to conceptual engineering and collaborating as an industry on that basis would save huge amounts of pain and rework managing the data!