manufacturing
How the digital twin drives smart manufacturing
In today’s customer-centric market, businesses need to ensure that their product design, processes, and delivery are aligned with the needs of the customers.
However, manufacturing has been negotiating several bottlenecks like extended time to market, wastage, shortcomings in product design, and more. Other key challenges in manufacturing include maintaining operational efficiency while reducing downtime. Ensuring that the product meets the required quality standards is time-consuming and expensive. In a competitive marketplace, these factors can serve as an impediment to the success of a business.
Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine Language (ML), etc., have solved several issues that manufacturing faces. However, there is scope for further enhancements.
Enter the Digital Twin Technology to make manufacturing smart!
Digital twin technology has become an extremely popular technology across various industrial sectors! Data reveals that “the Digital Twin market size which was valued at USD 8 million in 2022 is forecast to grow at CAGR 25% from 2023 to 2032.”
A 2022 report states that “60% of executives across a broad spectrum of industry plan to integrate Digital Twin in their projects to boost revenue!”
Curious as to why digital twin technology is making huge strides in the industrial sector?
Let’s delve into the details of this path-breaking technology!
What is Digital Twin Technology?
A digital twin is essentially the virtual representation of physical products during different stages of their lifecycle. These products may be real devices, objects, machines, services, intangible assets, and more.
It is the convergence of real and virtual products that can be remotely connected to real objects to provide a rich representation of the objects. Constant data transmission facilitates the existence of virtual objects with real objects.
How Does the Digital Twin Make Manufacturing Smart?
In manufacturing digital twins can be generated for various real-life scenarios like assets, specific production lines, end products, etc. The digital representation helps gain knowledge and deeper visibility into production.
Manufacturing is a complex network of processes and products with several data points. These data points describe products, assets, entire lines, processes, etc. The digital twin replicates the manufacturing operations to capture, map, and structure the process variables in a continuously updated database.
Technologies used in Digital Twin deployment
Internet of Things (IoT):
IoT sensors facilitate continuous data transmission.
Cloud Computing:
Helps in storing large volumes of data that can be accessed by various stakeholders.
AI:
AI gathers data and provides valuable insights. AI also makes accurate forecasts.
Extended Reality (XR):
XR technology facilitates digital modelling of physical objects and processes.
Benefits of Digital Twin in Manufacturing
Risk Mitigation
Businesses can test and validate a product before it exists in the real world. Replication of the planned process helps identify process failures before production.
A digital twin facilitates the assessment of the response of the existing system to unexpected conditions by synthesising various scenarios. This assessment helps in identifying risks and their mitigation.
Facilitates Predictive Maintenance
The data provided by the simulation model helps identify the bottlenecks in the system. It helps in scheduling preventive maintenance accurately which lowers maintenance costs and boosts production line efficiency.
Real-time Monitoring and Control
One of the biggest challenges in manufacturing is getting an in-depth view of the system in real-time. A digital twin helps overcome this challenge by facilitating remote monitoring and control of the process by providing real-time data.
Seamless Collaboration
A digital twin offers a single point of truth for different stakeholders. They can access data 24/7 and collaborate through a single platform for better outcomes.
Data-backed Decisions
Large volumes of real-time data and advanced analytics facilitate better and faster decision-making regarding the adjustments in the manufacturing system.
Delights Customers
Digital twin technology facilitates the simulation of different product variations in a virtual environment. This helps manufacturers build customised products efficiently and cost-effectively thereby boosting customer experience.
Final Takeaway
There was a time when physical proximity and inspection was the most effective way to gain insights into the status of operating equipment. Digital twin technology has offered an innovative method to gain these insights by virtualising real processes/products. The digital twin helps create, test, and build equipment in a virtual environment. Businesses can go ahead with manufacturing only when they are satisfied with the virtual model on all accounts. This not only reduces waste but also optimises costs, and makes manufacturing agile and resilient while boosting efficiency. Hence it comes as no surprise that the “Digital Twin market in manufacturing is expected to reach a whopping USD 48.2 by 2026.”
For organizations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organizational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organizations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organizations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.
