Digital Twin Technology, its Implementation and Advantages
What is Digital Twin Technology?
This technology helps simulating a physical entity and combination of entities in a way that the physical asset and the digital asset can run differently at the same time.
It will now combine the physical with the virtual world, driven by internet of things (iot) In this converged result, all the industrial products will have a dynamic representation.
Any product right from the phase of development, throughout the design phase until the delivery stage will have a digital replica.
Since these are digital prints, they will produce data which can be accessed on a real-time basis.
This will help in better analysis and prediction for businesses and will reduce some certain cost in analyzing data.
Implementing the digital twin technology will result in better customer service which will further enhance the business.
Start-ups and existing companies in the healthcare, construction, automotive, finance industry and others using digital twin technology have improved efficiency in different case studies that were reviewed.
The Digital Twin technology, which helps all these, uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, internet of things and big data for the data and analysis.
How the Digital twin technology is implemented
Digital Twins will act as the virtual substitute for the physical products.
They will duplicate the machines as well as the physical sites with the help of sensors.
This can be built way before the actual creation of the physical asset.
To produce the digital twin, the engineers will source the data from various sources like manufacturing, physical, operational etc and analyze it.
This entire information along with the artificial intelligence algorithms will be put into a virtual model where the analytics are applied.
This will generate the relevant results in regards to the actual asset. Since the data will be generated on a continuous’ basis, it will help in giving the optimal analysis for the better outcome in businesses.
In other words, the digital twin will act as the live model for the physical equipment.
This will help in predicting the current state of the asset as well as the future.
The Advantages of digital twin technology
The information secured in the digital form is maintained to be used for future purposes.
Right from the design phase until the deployment, all the details are stored securely, thus producing the digital twin.
When the product is being sold and released into the market, then the history of the product will be kept in the digital form.
This record will have all the details regarding the product which will help in giving an enhanced service and will also ease the process of maintenance.
The stored digital information will help in giving the complete picture of the product.
The current state of the product can also be kept on track throughout the product life.
This will help in predicting the maintenance schedule and will also help in effective tool management.
The digital twin has proved its importance in improving the maintenance operations by giving support for the equipment in the field and be minimizing the breakdown of the products.
Application in Business
In regards to the business sector, the digital twin concept has proved itself to be the next big step.
Although there may be some challenges, however, the advantages of digital twin technology outweigh the disadvantages.
This is because of its capacity to analyze and predict the status of the physical assets.
When a digital twin is in place, it will help in giving a better insight into the product and it will also enhance the customer service.
It has already started changing the product cycle in the manufacturing industry, making nice impacts on blockchain transaction processes.
For example, this has proven to make the manufacturing process more optimized and has saved a lot of time.
In the case of the automobile sector, the digital twin is used to produce a virtual model of a vehicle.
With the help of the operational data of the vehicle, the overall performance of the vehicle can be kept tracked.
This will pave the way for the customized customer service.
The aforementioned industries are not the only ones which customer services had been improved with the digital twin.
In the retail sector, virtual twins are created for customers where the accessories can be tried out with the models.
This has enhanced the customer experience significantly.
Digital Twin has also proven useful in enhancing the security features in several fields.
The overall management of the products seems to be handled easily with the help of Digital Twin technology.
The advantage of the ability to monitor, track and control all the digital twins of the physical assets has made this technology unavoidable for businesses.