Simple Digital Twin Explanation

What is Digital Twin?

A digital twin is a digital replica of a living or non-living physical entity. Digital twin refers to a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets (physical twin), processes, people, places, systems and devices that can be used for various purposes. The digital representation provides both the elements and the dynamics of how an Internet of things device operates and lives throughout its life cycle.

Digital twins integrate internet of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning and software analytics with spatial network graphs to create living digital simulation models that update and change as their physical counterparts change. A digital twin continuously learns and updates itself from multiple sources to represent its near real-time status, working condition or position. Digital Twin is considered one of the key trends for IoT.

Concept of Twins

The concept of using “twins” is rather old. It dates back to NASA’s Apollo program, where at least two identical space vehicles were built to allow mirroring the conditions of the space vehicle during the mission. One vehicle remaining on earth was called the twin. The twin was used extensively for training during flight preparation. During the flight mission it was used to simulate alternatives on the earth based model, where the available flight data were used to mirror the flight conditions as precise as possible, and thus to assist the astronauts in orbit in critical situations. In this sense, every kind of prototype, which is used to mirror the real operating conditions for simulation of the real time behavior, can be seen as a twin. Another form of a “hardware” twin is the “Iron Bird”, a ground-based engineering tool used in aircraft industries to incorporate, optimize and validate vital aircraft systems (Airbus Industries, Innovation 2015). Due to the increasing power of simulation technologies more and more physical components are replaced by virtual models in the Iron Bird. This allows for using the concept of an Iron Bird in earlier development cycles, even when some physical components are not yet available. Extending this idea further along all phases of the life cycle leads to a complete digital model of the physical system: the Digital Twin. The term Digital Twin was brought to the general public for the first time in NASA’s integrated technology roadmap under the technology area 11: Modeling, Simulation, Information Technology & Processing (NASA Technology Roadmap, 2010 and 2012). It was outlined as “A Digital Twin is an integrated multiphysics, multiscale simulation of a vehicle or system that uses the best available physical models, sensor updates, fleet history, etc., to mirror the life of its corresponding flying twin.”

Why Is the Time Right to Develop Your Digital Twin Strategy?

50% of Fortune 500 in 2000 now replaced by organizations that use technology to deliver customer value faster,better and cheaper. The fortune 500 of today face the same challenge tomorrow Business innovation is not an optional anymore. It's the only way to survive. Digital transformation is an opportunity for some companies and will be a disaster for others. If we look at the world’s leading businesses today – think Amazon, Netflix and Apple – they all have one thing in common – they are entirely digital, and they didn’t get where they are today from playing it safe. They have made the investment in people and technology, while allowing to thrive. Many make the mistake of thinking that digital transformation is just for the large customer-facing corporates, when in reality, it is quickly becoming a sink or swim situation for start-ups and SMEs, too. Whether it’s streamlining processes, improving customer satisfaction or flexibility — all of which lead to heavy cost savings — the benefits significantly outweigh the risks if implemented in the right way. The opportunity for businesses moving to a digital way of working is undeniable. What can begin as a small introduction of advanced technologies can quickly roll out into the entire organization.

A convergence of macro-economic trends and the emergence of new enabling technologies make now the ideal time to build digital twin strategies into the fabric of your digital transformation to accelerate your time to value. Addressed together under a cohesive digital twin strategy, you can gain an operational and a strategic advantage and outperform the competition.

What Defines A Digital Twin Platform?

?It seems there are 6 key features that would define any scalable digital twin platform.

1.??????Manage the Digital Twin Lifecycle — How do you design, build, test, deploy and maintain a digital twin and its digital master? Digital twins are the instantiations of something called the digital thread or digital master. For instance, each windmill will be based on a common digital master that represent the engineering diagrams, bill of material, software versions and other artifacts used to create each windmill. A digital twin platform needs the tools to bring all this information together to create the digital master and then manage any changes to the digital master. Tools then need to be available to test, deploy and manage each digital twin based on a specific digital master. The tools also need to be able to handle hundreds of digital masters and thousands of digital twins.

2.??????Single Source of Truth — A digital twin is supposed to be an exact replica of a physical asset and the data coming from the asset. However, the maintenance of a physical asset can often change its physical state. For instance, a specific windmill might have a replacement part or a different version of firmware installed; other windmills might not have the same updates. A digital twin platform is able to update and provide the exact state for each individual digital twin, creating a single source of truth.

3.??????Open API — A well-defined digital twin becomes the interface and integration point for an Industrial IoT solution. A digital twin platform provides an open api that allows any system to interact with the digital twin. For instance, machine learning and analytics services should be able to interact with a digital twin through an API. An organization should be able to integrate their digital twin into other enterprise systems, like ERP or SCM systems. A digital twin API should really enable the concept of Device as a Service. The Eclipse Ditto project provides a good illustration of an API for a digital twin.

4.??????Visualization and Analysis — Organizations should be able to use their digital twin platform to create visualizations, dashboards, and in-depth analysis of this live data from the digital twin. The live data should be linked to the digital master to allow for drill-downs into design documents or other components of the digital master.

5.??????Event and process management — it should be possible to setup events and business processed to be executed based on digital twin data. For instance, events to schedule maintenance calls based on live data and an accurate view of the current maintenance status of the physical asset.

6.??????Customer and User Perspective — A digital twin platform needs to provide a customer and user perspective. What organization own or operate each digital twin? What users are allowed to access the data and information associated with the digital twin. How can you share information with other users that might be involved in the design of a new release for the asset. A digital twin platform needs to enable collaboration between the stakeholders of the digital twin.

Applications and Importance

A comprehensive collaboration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics, digital twin predicts the issue before it occurs in the physical machine. It is like knowing the future and having the capability to mold it.

With digital twin technology, minimum time and capital is invested in resolving any issue. There are comparatively lesser downtime and overhead expenditures. It is an integrated way to optimize and monitor the performance virtually.

Innovation in business accompanied by seamless customer services is yet another application of digital twin. It manages the customer operations and understands their needs. It is increasingly finding its applications in aircraft engines, locomotives, wind turbines, buildings and HVAC control systems, healthcare and retail.

Internet of things acts as a base for the digital twin technology. Hence, in the near future, most of the IoT platforms will adopt digital twin technology. GE uses the digital environment to inform the configuration of each wind turbine prior to construction. It has implemented over 500,000 digital twins. German packaging systems manufacturer, Optima, digitally mapped and examined its transport system using digital twin technology by Siemens. The Singapore government, in association with the 3D design software giant Dassault Systèmes, is building a virtual model of the country with an aim to optimize and augment the urban planning process.

For every asset and product, there is a virtual replica of the same made functional via cloud services which consistently utilizes the operational data to produce better results and provide extra insights. It won’t be long that more and more companies would want to adopt digital twin to survive the competitive market and have favorable business outcomes.