Wondering how to start scaling digital twins effectively across your enterprise? You’re not alone.
Digital twins are becoming some of the most valuable tools across organizations. Companies in industries from manufacturing to healthcare are now embracing digital twins, alongside AI and extended reality, to boost efficiency, optimize innovation, and drive growth.
In fact, by 2032, the market for digital twin technology is expected to reach a value of $259.32 billion – growing at a CAGR of 40.1%. The trouble is, while many companies are adopting digital twins – few know how to take full advantage of these technologies, after the initial rollout.
Here’s your guide to scaling digital twins intelligently – ensuring you extract the maximum value from your investment.
Scaling Digital Twins: Steps for Success
Implementing digital twins into business workflows can be complicated enough. You need to choose the best digital twin solution (based on your specific needs), invest in the right software and hardware (including XR headsets in many cases), and train your teams. Scaling digital twins introduces a range of new challenges, particularly if you want to keep costs low, and boost ROI.
Here are the key steps you’ll need to follow.
Step 1: Identifying Expanding Digital Twin Use Cases
Companies that use digital twins generally see incredible improvements in productivity, efficiency, and innovation. In fact, McKinsey found that digital twins can help to reduce product development times by around 50%.
However, the real power comes from discovering new ways to extend the value of your technology. You might start off using digital twins to enhance product design. For example, companies like Rolls Royce and BMW rely heavily on digital twins to help plan and create new vehicles. But it’s important to look at other opportunities too. For instance, you could use digital twins to:
- Enhance office management: Digital twins can help you simulate workplace layouts for hybrid teams, finding ways to minimize real-estate costs, reduce energy consumption, and even enhance employee comfort, by adjusting settings in real-time.
- Transform supply chains: Digital twins can revolutionize logistics operations by providing real-time visibility into inventory levels, transportation routes, and warehouse management. They can help you to predict and avoid disruptions, and increase efficiency.
- Improve employee and customer experiences: Creating digital twins of physical spaces can allow you to create metaverse environments for remote workers or digital spaces where you can interact with and onboard customers.
Conduct a thorough analysis of your current business processes and look for areas where digital twins can drive improvements. Use analytics and AI-driven insights to drill into opportunities that will deliver tangible upgrades to user experiences, innovation, or productivity levels.
Step 2: Planning for Scaling Digital Twins
Once you’ve figured out where you’re going to start scaling digital twins across your enterprise, you’ll need a comprehensive plan. After all, you will need to ensure you have the right technology, the correct resources, and training initiatives to drive your initiative.
Start by developing a comprehensive roadmap that outlines the challenges you want to address. For instance, if you’re in the construction sector, you might be using digital twins to streamline product design or gain real-time insights into machinery faults and performance issues. Figure out which metrics you’re going to track to determine if your solutions are driving the right results.
Next, make sure you have the right technology and infrastructure in place for scaling digital twins. Some digital twins solutions, like the NVIDIA Omniverse system or Microsoft Azure’s digital twins, make it easy to scale with cloud-based resources. However, other tools might require an investment in additional computing power, tools, or even accessories, like XR headsets.
During this stage, make sure you make a list of the key tools and systems your digital twin technologies will need to integrate with, such as collaboration tools or CAD systems.
Then, develop your training programs. Create videos, guides, and hands-on workshops that will teach your team members how to use digital twins safely, effectively, and ethically.
Step 3: Ensuring Data Security and Compliance
Data security and compliance are two of the most crucial things you can’t afford to overlook when scaling digital twins. Remember, digital twins thrive on access to huge volumes of valuable data. Some industries, like finance, government, and healthcare, consume particularly sensitive data, making security a non-negotiable priority.
Implement best practices to reduce data security issues. For instance, you could prioritize “data minimization”- ensuring you only collect data that’s essential for each simulation. You may also introduce anonymization and encryption strategies for highly sensitive data.
To make sure you adhere to compliance standards, do your research. Learn about the regulatory guidelines that affect how you use digital twins, such as GDPR and CCPA rules. Implement data flow mapping strategies to identify potential compliance gaps, and make sure you have a system in place for continuous compliance monitoring and training.
Additionally, take advantage of the security features your digital twin provider has to offer. Many vendors offer robust access controls, end-to-end encryption options, and even real-time monitoring tools to help you mitigate threats. For instance, Siemens’ digital twin services come with built-in real-time threat monitoring features.
Step 4: Measuring and Optimizing ROI for Scaling Digital Twins
Your approach to scaling digital twins should always concentrate on increasing the measurable value of your systems. Without a clear way to track success, you’ll risk pouring endless resources into a digital twin strategy that never delivers a return.
Based on the goals you set when you began implementing and building your digital twin strategy, identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to monitor. For instance, you might track things like:
- Operational Efficiency: Has downtime decreased? Are processes running smoother?
- Cost Savings: Are predictive maintenance and process optimizations reducing expenses?
- Product Quality & Safety: Have defect rates or failure incidents decreased?
- Decision-Making Speed: Are simulations leading to faster, more data-driven decisions?
Remember, a strong ROI analysis requires a before-and-after comparison. Make sure you record performance benchmarks before you implement your digital twin technologies, so you can identify the measurable impact of these systems.
Additionally, remember to update your data regularly. Keep gathering insights, so you can adjust workflows and strategies based on your discoveries.
Step 5: Future-Proofing with Innovation
Finally, a successful approach to scaling digital twins often depends on a “long-term” approach. Digital twin technology and the opportunities in this industry are always evolving, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest innovations.
For instance, embracing machine learning algorithms for digital twins allows you to ensure your systems constantly learn and improve without endless retraining. ML algorithms can identify patterns, predict failures, and fine-tune simulations for your various use cases.
Prepare for the next level of digital twin interactions, by combining your technology with extended reality strategies. XR solutions give your teams a way to explore digital twins like never before, interacting with virtual simulations, and collaborating with dispersed teams through headsets.
Think about how you’re going to stay up-to-date with current trends as they emerge in the digital twin market. Read news reports, review articles from industry leaders, and visit conferences and events to learn more about trends like the rise of edge computing and 5G, AI and automation, and advanced extended reality solutions for digital twins.
Scaling Digital Twins the Smart Way
Scaling digital twins across your enterprise isn’t just about creating new workflows or buying more tech. Companies need a plan to intelligently extend their systems, so they can future proof their operations, and get the best return on their investment.
Taking a strategic approach to scaling digital twins will help you to gradually improve, optimize, and enhance all kinds of business operations, without exposing your organization to unnecessary risks.
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