What Are Industrial Digital Twins And How Do Companies Benefit From Them?

Exploring the Benefits of Industrial Digital Twins

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What Are Industrial Digital Twins And How Do Companies Benefit From Them?
Mixed RealityInsights

Published: February 13, 2023

Rebekah Carter

Rebekah Carter

The industrial world has evolved rapidly over the last couple of years. Since the concept of Industry 4.0 was introduced a few years ago, we’ve seen the rise of countless new disruptive ideas in the space. Today’s industry-based companies are now experimenting with artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, Extended Reality, and even the Blockchain.

Perhaps one of the most interesting new technologies to emerge from this innovative landscape, is the “digital twin”. Back in 2017, Gartner predicted within 4 years, around half of large industrial companies would already be using digital twins to boost efficiencies by 10%.

Now, the market for digital twin technology is set to surpass a value of $53.5 billion by 2028, representing a phenomenal CAGR of around 42.1%. Yet even as the demand for digital twin technology continues to grow in the Industrial space, there are still countless companies who don’t fully understand what digital twins are, or why they’re so beneficial.

Let’s explore the true potential of the digital twin.

What are Industrial Digital Twins?

Digital twins are virtual representations of a process, product, or service, derived primarily from sensor-based information. They essentially bring an exact copy of a specific concept into the digital world, bridging the gaps between the virtual and physical environments, and making it possible to optimise operations, detect issues, and simulate scenarios.

In some ways, digital twins share a lot of the same qualities as prior tools used in the Industrial space, such as 3D digital models. However, they take the functionality of these solutions one step further, by leveraging real-time information from the physical counterpart replicated in the digital world. Using 5G connectivity and IoT solutions, alongside AI and machine learning, digital twins can remotely simulate the exact conditions and features of an existing tool.

Put another way, digital twins are living, breathing, and dynamic post-production models which evolve at the same rate as the physical asset they represent. They provide engineers with virtual tools which allow them to explore, assess, and even optimise physical assets, processes, and systems.

As the technology landscape has continued to evolve, the capabilities of digital twins have transformed too. For instance, using virtual and augmented reality alongside 3D graphics and data modelling, users in the XR environment can actually interact with a digital twin in real-time.

How do Industrial Digital Twins Benefit Businesses?

Industrial digital twins provide companies with more freedom to assess, enhance, and monitor tools on a comprehensive basis. In manufacturing, digital twin technology can be used at multiple levels. For instance, companies can focus on a highly critical component within the manufacturing process, or use digital twins to monitor and improve an entire production line.

According to one survey from 2022, only around 5% of companies said they weren’t pursing digital twins as part of their digital transformation strategy. Another 86% said they believed digital twins were a crucial solution worth pursuing or investing in straight away.

Perhaps one of the key things that makes digital twins so compelling in the Industrial landscape, is how versatile they can be. Digital twins don’t just solve a single problem in the industry, but address a number of different paths to optimisation and enhancement. With digital twins, companies can:

1.    Improve Customer Satisfaction

Like all companies, industrial brands are increasingly responding to rapidly evolving customer expectations and demands. Todays clients expect all companies to understand their needs, and they’re willing to spend more if they know they’re guaranteed good service.

Digital twins can enhance customer satisfaction by allowing companies to take part in preventative maintenance efforts, while also collecting real-time data on the product or solution in question. Because digital twins collect information consistently, they can enable smoother repair and customer service operations, while paving the way for informed future product improvements.

2.    Enhanced product quality

The data collection enabled by digital twins makes it easier to gather valuable insights into how to improve the performance of industrial products and solutions. Engineers and designers can use historical and real-time data to assist in the creation of new versions of products. Using XR environments, it’s even possible to create new innovations based on existing models.

With digital twins, companies can also bring together collaborative specialists from various different environments to accelerate time to market, and boost innovation. Digital twins even allow engineers to validate the performance of a product before investing in physical prototyping. This leads to significant savings in both cost and time.

3.    Increased productivity and efficiency

All industrial businesses want to be able to operate with greater levels of productivity and efficiency. Digital twins offer the insights necessary to enhance efficiencies across the value chain. Teams can bring together data sets from different environments to find potential bottlenecks. They can also detect problems quickly, and resolve them more rapidly throughout the production and after-care process.

With digital twins, off-site and remote experts can observe active equipment using XR technologies, and assist team members in fixing problems as they emerge, which helps to reduce the risk of downtime, boost team performance, and improve customer satisfaction. Companies like Harpak-Ulma have already achieved productivity improvements between 30 and 60% with digital twins.

4.    Greater Access to New Opportunities

Digital Twins can also assist companies in achieving a range of complex goals in the modern Industrial environment. For instance, using digital twins, businesses can collect the data and insights they need to drive sustainability efforts, and make their operations eco-friendlier, so they adhere with changing government guidelines and regulations.

Digital twins can also open the door to new business models, such as “Product as a Service”. Incorporating digital twin technology into products means industrial companies can share the data they collect with their clients to help them make intelligent business decisions on a subscription basis. This could open the door to more types of Industrial company in the years to come.

The Future of Digital Twins

Ultimately, digital twins in the Industrial world provide organisations with greater visibility into their data, and new opportunities to innovate, create, and transform. Some digital twin solutions can even work autonomously, analysing situations and proposing the correct solutions in real-time, to make teams more efficient and effective.

When a company builds a digital replica of its products, the environments in which they operate, and the systems they produce, it can predict virtually anything that might happen in the real world, and explore endless new opportunities as they emerge.

 

 

Digital TwinImmersive ExperienceIndustry 4.0
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