Digital Twins are emerging as a tried and tested business tool. However, unlike other XR and derivative technologies, digital twins are already commonplace, and the ROI benefits are becoming more widespread knowledge.
But solution vendors and XR champions still have a way to prove to wider audiences the benefits of enterprise digital twins; a critical method of proving this is solid figures from positive outcomes, customer success/approval, and successful pilot programmes.
Luckily digital twins share similarities to other pre-existing digital formats like CAD files – making them somewhat familiar, easier to understand, and therefore easier to utilize.
Unlike CADs, digital twins allow for highly accurate and detailed digitizations of real-world objects, devices, people, and places for various enterprise use cases.
In a recent interview, a Siemens executive and a Nalco Water director explained how digital twins improve Ecolab’s profitability, sustainability, and customer experiences.
Profitability and Environmental Responsibility can Coexist
Sterling Allen, Director of Business Development for Siemens Process Systems Engineering, noted that digital twin technology shows an “immense potential” in supporting industrial sustainability efforts.
Allen explained that by creating a virtual replica of a system or process, companies can simulate, predict and optimize their operations, which optimizes resource utilization and efficiency while decreasing waste.
Additionally, digital twin enterprise end-users can experience improved decision-making, according to Allen – who added:
When our customers see the results from a validated process model compared with actual plant data, they are able to trust the system and rely on its recommendations for improved decision-making.
Digital twin technology and its outcomes are not limited, however. Allen notes while digital twins are a tool that significantly contributes to sustainability efforts, it also “boosts their bottom line.”
Allen states that digital twins allow a firm to demonstrate how “profitability and environmental responsibility can coexist.”
Addressing Stress Points and Leveraging Digital Twins
Neil Davidson, a Director of Nalco Water’s Downstream Division, Ecolab company, noted that the Ecolab-Siemens partnership came from an internal initiative addressing “stressors that exacerbate water and climate change, and the related impacts on our customers’ operations.”
According to the Nalco Water Director, the firm found a “pressing need “for innovative enterprise solutions following customer feedback, helping the firm to influence business operations and drive decarbonization and carbon dioxide emission reduction goals.
Nalco Water partnered with Siemens Process Systems Engineering to help evolve its design processes with digital twin technology, with Davidson noting:
We quickly identified digital tools as an indispensable component in addressing the challenge, leading us to evaluate potential digital technology companies for a partnership. Siemens Process Systems Engineering emerged as the perfect fit due to its expertise in digital twin technology, customer-centric approach, and dedication to the decarbonization of industrial processes.
Via the Siemens Process Systems Engineering partnership, Nalco Water launched Climate Intelligence that utilizes “Ecolab’s deep industry expertise and broad footprint in the water industry, coupled with Siemens’ digital capabilities,” to create a “robust, effective solution for decarbonization.”
Davidson also explained how digital twin technologies are an “immediate step towards sustainability” for various enterprise end-users – like Nalco Water.
Davidson added:
Climate Intelligence pilots have shown that the technology can facilitate approximately a 5% overall reduction in emissions and pays for itself through efficiency gains.
Pilot Programme and Succesful Implementation
During a digital twin pilot programme, David explained how Nalco Water leveraged the immersive technology to visualize complex interactions, mitigating operations risk and negative outcomes.
Using digital twins, Nalco Water was able to “quantify the repercussions” of operating costs, water losses, wasted energy and additional emissions.
Moreover, Davidson said that in another pilot, the firm designed a digital twin of a cooling system to replicate the poor use of the machine.
The Director added:
This cooling digital twin, which is the first of its kind, allows us to connect cooling water performance to production outcomes. This enables us to tune the cooling water to best serve low-emissions production and also enables us to quantify the opportunity gap in near real-time. These cooling systems are incredibly dynamic, especially in different weather conditions and times of day, which is why digital twin technology is so important.
More on Siemen Digital Twins
Siemens believes in immersive technology. Currently, the firm is investing roughly €1 billion into enterprise-grade Metaverse solutions that will assist the German region lead in technology innovation.
Siemens wants to be “the nucleus of global technology activities for the industrial metaverse” with its significant investment, with expansion plans to leverage its sustainable technologies and boost green energy supplies and storage.
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market at Siemens, explained:
We’re laying the foundation for the industrial metaverse in the Nuremberg metropolitan region. Here, on the new campus, we’re combining the real and the digital worlds. Together with partners, we’re developing new digital technologies in the metaverse and revolutionizing how we’ll run our production in the future – much more efficiently, flexibly and sustainably.
The firm is looking to lay down client-ready immersive solutions like those at Nalco Water. While simultaneously driving industry-wide knowledge of XR technology via educational spaces, such as its €500 million Erlangen-based Technology Campus, to help immersive experts collaborate globally on R&D to boost manufacturing capabilities.
