One of the top 10 strategic technology trends named by Gartner Inc. in 2017 is Digital Twin Technology. Digital Twin concept represents the merging of the virtual and the physical world to get a dynamic digital representation of every industrial product. Organizations can have a complete digital footprint of their products, right from the design phase to the deployment phase, throughout the product development lifecycle. Digital Twins which combines Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Internet of Things and Machine Learning (ML) are key in Industry 4.0 and are mostly used in the engineering, Industrial Internet of Things, and manufacturing business space.  Digital Twins have become more cost-effective and accessible for the business world with the more useful and widespread reach of the Internet of Things.

How do Digital Twins work?

Digital Twins are created using sensors as digitized duplicates of machines or physical sites. Before an asset is built physically, these digital assets can be created. The engineers synthesize and collect data from various sources which include manufacturing data, operational data, physical data, and insights from analytics software for creating a digital twin of any physical asset. We get the relevant insights regarding the physical asset by applying Analytics into these models and physics-based virtual model is integrated by all the information along with AI algorithms. The best possible analysis and insights regarding the asset which helps in optimizing the business outcome are by the consistent flow of data. Thus, it acts as a live model of the physical asset.

Applications of Digital Twins

Inaccurately predicting the current state and future of physical assets by analyzing their digital counterparts is the next big thing in most of the business sectors for the Digital Twin concept. Organizations improve customer service, make better operational and strategic decisions, and gain better insights on product performance based on these insights by implementing Digital Twins.

Major applications of Digital Twins can be seen in the following sectors.

•        Manufacturing

•        Automobile

•        Retail

•        Healthcare

•        Smart Cities

•        Industrial IoT

Digital twins in the industry 4.0

Digital Twins is at the core of this new revolution bringing in huge possibilities. The traditional approach of ‘the first build and then tweak’ in the industrial world is changed by it, brings in a more virtual system based design process by understanding its performance, unique features, and potential issues if any. Without spending for a dedicated trainer or simulator, an operator can get trained on a virtual machine, with Digital Twin. The future is not too far for the machines to take the autonomy to the next level, with the further evolution of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In such an autonomous world of industrial machines, we can witness increasing self-awareness in the machines and the role of Digital Twins evolving.

Digital Twins is a significant step to see an exciting future to get unfolded in the world of Engineering and Manufacturing.  Are you ready to unlock this enormous potential?