What is a Digital Twin

Digital Twins Benefits

Digital twins allow us to collect remote information and display it in a way that makes it more easily understandable. Imagine an animated model of a factory with status indicators for every part of every machine, versus the world’s biggest spreadsheet. The animated model just makes more sense to the human brain because it mimics reality. Digital twins can process massive datasets more easily and help technicians and managers work with them more intelligently (with or without the help of machine learning/AI).

The benefits of digital twins can range from keeping track of asset collections and locations, to quality control, to driving efficiency. Some digital twins are designed for predictive modelling of states or behaviours, which allows creators to test scenarios without the same negative consequences that you’d see in the real world.

History of Digital Twins

Digital twins go back to the 1960s. NASA’s original “pairing technology” was an early form of digital twin. Pairing technology was used to train astronauts and save the crew of the Apollo 13 mission, and was updated by telemetry and voice communications.

Much later, in 2002, Michael Grieves of the University of Michigan used the concept of “mirrored systems” for a product lifecycle management course, and coined the term “digital twin” in a 2011 book on the topic.

In recent years, digital technology has advanced, and data collection and processing has become easier and more cost effective. The creation of digital twins has become an achievable goal for organizations of all sizes, which is why you’re hearing about them more and more.

Gartner reports that, as of February 2019, 75% of organizations that were using IoT either had started to use a digital twin or were intending to within a year.

What is An Example of a Digital Twin 

There are already plenty of digital twins at work today:

• Logistics providers use them to track deliveries via location sensors on trucks
• Manufacturing facilities use sensors to test products and monitor equipment condition (e.g. temperature spikes can indicate a failure about to happen)
• Health care providers can monitor patient condition via wearable sensors
• Aircraft flight traffic mapping using the ADSI (Aircraft Situational Display to Industry) system
• The entire city of Singapore is modelled in 3D (augmented with building information modelling or BIM) for testing upgrades intended to improve daily life for its citizens

There are companies seeing incredible ROI from digital twin systems. Chevron has saved millions of dollars in equipment repair costs for oilfield equipment, and GE has used them to design wind turbines that capture 20% more energy.

Use Case for Digital Twins in Enterprise Asset Management

According to Forbes, the Global 2000 held $189 trillion in assets as of 2018. For the massive collections of assets enterprises use in production, digital twins offer unparalleled lifecycle management tracking opportunities.

The creation of a digital twin may sound like a difficult project to supply chain managers who are already pressed for time. In many cases, however, it’s not even necessary to retrofit existing equipment with sensors to create a useful digital twin. With the simplest digital asset record it becomes possible to trace an asset’s entire lifecycle, from raw materials through its operational history and successive ownerships until it is finally recycled.

At any point along the way, the owner can know where it is, what it is doing, and where it’s going. As long as the record formatting is compliant with international standards, it can be linked to other systems.

This may not sound like a game changer when we’re used to reading articles hyping AI and blockchain, but the slow pace of supply chain digitization (even at the enterprise level) is one of the field’s best kept secrets. There are still a surprising number of global companies managing assets through spreadsheets and siloed systems.

Additionally, most supply chain managers know that we’re still waiting for machine learning and distributed ledger technologies to mature to the point where they have more practical value. In the meantime, managers need to take the first critical step: digitizing their asset records in a format that can be transferred from operational system to operational system. This will prepare the organization for a future in which everything will be connected.

Digital Twins Will Give More Visibility to Asset Management

Even though procurement tends to get the spotlight when the focus is on supply chain, asset management is the foundation of the enterprise. Once they’re fully developed, digital twins allow asset managers to issue reports showing how many millions of dollars they’ve saved through:

• Providing visibility to surplus assets that could be sold
• Maintenance scheduling that reduces emergency shutdown and repair costs
• Streamlined production flows through things like automated quality control checks
• Finding system-wide efficiencies
• Risk avoidance and mitigation

Being able to see what they own gives asset managers the ability to make better decisions and provide better value to their organizations.

Taking the First Step is Easier Than You Think

Over the next five to ten years, we’ll see a groundswell of equipment that is IoT-ready, and digital twins will move from the cutting edge to the core of businesses of all sizes and maturity levels.

In the future, it may even be possible to track raw materials not just by lot numbers, but through nanotechnology worked in at the refining stage.

Requis’ procurement platform capability gives supply chain teams an achievable way to get ready for a future of exciting possibilities.

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