What is Digital Twin Technology — Use Cases, Solutions, and Examples

What is a Digital Twin?

The digital twin has smart components with sensors to gather real-time data, operational status, working conditions, etc. A cloud-based system receives and processes the data that these sensors monitor. An analysis is performed on this data against business and contextual data.

This entire process opens up vast opportunities by uncovering hidden information. These new learnings from the virtual environment can be applied to the real physical world, improving your business outcomes.

A Digital Twin Solution for Manufacturing Industry

Chemical Synthesis Process Monitor Twin

We built the digital twin of a chemical synthesis process monitor that could monitor the operations and create an alert in case of any sudden failure. It supports the operator in optimizing the yield by choosing the right process parameters.

It can also predict the yield quality of the drug under a given set of conditions or parameters. We deployed the process control monitor using the digital twin technology.

The solution has 4 components:

  • Mobile Alert: Open your mobile and put it in your pocket. You will get an alert when quality drops.
  • Floor Monitor: Display on a large screen on the plant floor. Operators can track in real-time when quality drops.
  • Predict Quality: Find out if a batch will produce a good result or a bad result — without running it.
  • Simulator: Re-run the last batch to explore the minimal change required to improve batch quality.

These four views were built in just 3 days using Gramex’s 8 components, replacing over 2,500 lines of code.

Watch the video to learn the exclusive features of our manufacturing digital twin

The client saved $2 Mn due to Golden Batch yield improvements.

Why Digital Twin is Gaining Popularity?

The next five years will see the rapid development of digital twins leading to interesting collaboration among physical world product experts and data scientists. It will reveal a lot about enhancing operations using data.

The digital twin is becoming so popular because organizations can employ their power to understand customer needs better, deliver an unmatched customer experience, develop product enhancements, optimize operations and services, and drive new business innovations.

It seems that the digital twin technology is on the verge of an explosion — As more success stories keep rolling out, more companies would want to deploy their digital twins to gain a competitive edge.

How Do Digital Twins Work? (The Concept of Process Simulation)

The developers ensure that the virtual computer model receives sensor feedback about data from the real-world version.

Gathering performance insights and identifying potential problems becomes simple by creating a digital version simulation of what happens in real-time.

A digital twin can be either complex or simple, depending on the amount of data used to make the simulation. The twin may require a prototype to work and offer feedback on the product while it is developed.

It can also be made into a prototype that models what can occur with a physical version when built.

The digital twin is created by combining a set of data with computational modeling to verify it. The interface can include sending and receiving feedback and data in real-time between the digital model and the actual physical object.

Types of Digital Twins

Parts Twinning

Computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM) solutions today, for example, allow users to perform a variety of analyses relating to durabilities, such as static stress and thermal stress.

Using electronic circuit simulation software, for instance, we can predict how components will react to various electrical signals. In order to predict real-life behavior under different scenarios, it is necessary to build mathematical models with a sufficient amount of complexity.

Product Twinning

As a result of knowing how parts work with each other and the environment surrounding them, owners are able to optimize the operating characteristics of their products, which minimizes such things as mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR).

System Twinning

Imagine an energy grid that can adjust the amount of electricity produced by monitoring the demand. You can extend this to any type of system family you want.

Communication systems and traffic control systems, as well as industrial manufacturing systems, will achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and effectiveness with unprecedented monitoring and experimentation.

Process Twinning

A Digital Twin model would also be beneficial to workflows with a business focus, even if there are still humans involved. It would allow managers to tweak inputs and see how outputs are affected without disrupting existing workflows, which otherwise would make the business completely stop.

Through process twinning, senior corporate leadership will be able to monitor key metrics in a much more data-driven manner than previously possible.

Digital Twins Use Cases Based on Industries

Technology allows immediate feedback about current activities, which can then be applied to future changes in record time. Digital Twins are particularly useful for maintaining connected heavy machines and infrastructure that generate and analyze large volumes of data due to their functionality. The application of digital twins goes beyond this, however.

Take a look at a few use cases of Digital Twin:

Healthcare

A digital twin can provide healthcare organizations with insight that can lead to innovative practices that will correct issues and minimize potential risks. In addition, real-time epidemiology data can help hospital workers track where infections agents might exist and who might be at risk from contacts.

Healthcare providers can use digital twins to optimize patient care, cost, and performance by virtualizing healthcare experiences.

Manufacturing

Product Development

Design Customization

Shop Floor Performance Improvement

Predictive Maintenance

Smart Cities

A Digital Twin can provide city managers with information in real-time about flooding, interrupted infrastructure, and hospitals that are expected to be affected, allowing them to take immediate action in case of a disaster.

Disaster Management

There have already been numerous impacts of global climate change across all regions and across many sectors of the economy expected to grow in the coming decades.

Fires, floods, and droughts are now commonplace. In such scenarios, Digital Twins allow for the construction of smarter infrastructure, such as dams, utility networks, emergency response plans, and zoned areas.

Supply Chain Logistics

Using Digital twins for Predictive Maintenance Problems

The following are some of the most common use cases across the industry:

  • Real-time visualization of products in use by real users
  • Troubleshooting equipment located far away
  • Complexity management and linking systems-of-systems
  • Integrating disparate systems to promote traceability

Using Digital Twins for Operational Analysis or Process Optimization

Manufacturers gain full insight into how assets, processes, and operations are interconnected for the first time.

Digital Twins vs Process Simulations

The core principle consists of creating a digital equivalent of a physical asset or entity in the virtual world.

Many people ask, “Are Digital Twins and simulations the same thing?” As the concept of Digital Twins is so new, the question is quite natural. The digital twins aim to accomplish much more than simply simulate things.

It is common to use simulations for designing and, in some cases, for optimizing offline. A digital twin, on the other hand, can be used during every phase of design, execution, change, and decommission.

At best, simulations can help us understand what may happen in reality. Digital Twins help us understand not only what may happen, but also how it actually happens (how the design behaves in reality).

Simulations cannot provide insight into how physical systems interact. The digital twin, however, helps reveal clashes and conflicts when physical objects interact.

Industry Applications of Digital Twins

A Pharma 4.0 strategy is in the works which will be flexible and based on International Council for Harmonization (ICH) guidelines, as well as Industry 4.0.

4 Digital Twins applications in Industry 4.0 & Manufacturing

Digital Twin Applications in Engineering

To identify potential problems and failures prior to production, companies can use digital twins to simulate and validate each step of the development process.

In addition to helping development teams to understand the effects of any potential changes in manufacturing processes on production outcomes, Twin Engineering helps them to adjust manufacturing operations to achieve targeted improvements.

Consequently, manufacturers can optimize operations and reduce the overall cost of engineering.

Digital Twin Applications in Design customization

Compared to small businesses, industrial companies of all sizes place more emphasis on improving production processes and strengthening customer relationships than on meeting custom product requests as revealed by Industry Week’s special report on the future of manufacturing.

To simplify product customization, manufacturers embrace Twin Design Customization, which allows consumers to customize the physical product virtually before it is developed, ensuring their needs are fully met.

Digital Twin Applications in Production

Digital Twin Applications in Operations

Digital replicas are built using static data and continuously updated dynamic information. Virtual monitoring and management of asset performance and manufacturing operations is possible for employees.

Benefits of Digital Twins: Reducing Cost & Optimizing Performance

By implementing a Digital Twin, you can predict problems and prevent downtime, thus increasing productivity and reducing costs.

Utilize past performance data to create simulations and forecast future improvement strategies for the manufacturing process based on the conclusions from the simulations.

Manufacturing can be monitored with digital twins from design to completion. As a result of improving performance, production can be faster, which assists you in meeting your targets.

As a result of analyzing data in real-time, Digital Twins enable you to take preventive maintenance steps before long-term damage occurs. Preventing smaller technical problems from becoming much larger and more expensive breakdowns is always preferable.

In the meantime, you can keep hitting targets and prevent unnecessary losses because no production downtime occurs. Moreover, the simulations you create will allow for increased profitability without adding additional resources.

Transform Business, Improve ROI & Make Operations Seamless with Digital Twins

Companies may now be able to create digital twins more quickly with lower capital expenditures and shorter time to value with new technology capabilities, flexibility, agility, and lower cost.

It can offer real-time answers to questions that couldn’t be answered previously, providing advantages that were unimaginable just a decade ago.

With the help of trusted technology partners and the identification of winning use cases, tangible business value and ROI can be obtained with digital twin implementation.

Providing additional stakeholders with key performance data and lowering costs throughout an organization can be accomplished by beginning with the design phase and continuing through servicing operations.

Providing transparency throughout an organization’s value chain through digital and physical convergence is becoming increasingly necessary as products move toward ‘as-a-service’ models.

By introducing and adopting the digital twin, we can accomplish this digital transformation and connect the digital thread.

Contact us for custom built low code data and AI solutions for your business challenges and check out digital twin solution built for our clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Book a free demo right now.

Contact Gramener for building custom digital twin solutions for manufacturing and pharma industry

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Gramener is a design-led data science company that solves complex business problems with compelling data stories using insights and a low-code platform, Gramex.

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Gramener

Gramener is a design-led data science company that solves complex business problems with compelling data stories using insights and a low-code platform, Gramex.