The digital twin has become one of the critical technologies introduced by Industry 4.0. Tech enthusiasts root for the digital twin as a ground-breaking solution for businesses in manufacturing, automotive, energy, and some other industries, promising enormous benefits as well as an impact on operational processes and decision-making.
However, cooperation with a digital twin development company will be a significant investment for any business, and mere hype surrounding the technology won’t be a sufficient reason to initiate such a project. But when the company comprehends the true value the technology has, it can leverage it to solve real issues and challenges, strengthening its business.
How Does Digital Twin Work?
The digital twin is a digital copy of a certain physical product, asset, or process created for simulation, testing, monitoring, maintenance, or integration in a digital dimension without engaging the real physical object.
At first sight, a digital twin might remind you of a simulation used by researchers and other specialists to run specific tests and assessments. It would be the truth, but with one significant difference: simulation is static, meaning that the data required to build it is uploaded once. If some changes happen later with a real object, the simulation won’t represent it, as this data can’t be uploaded later.
Digital twins, on the other hand, are fed data about the object and conditions surrounding it in real-time, so businesses get a relevant, constantly updated digital copy of a desired project they can use further for various purposes.
Such an ability to preserve a constant connection with the world makes testing and analytics more precise and informative than any other simulation.
Benefits Digital Twin Can Bring to Your Business
Virtual Training and e-Learning
The digital twin is a detailed copy of an asset, and your employees can easily interact with it the way they would with a real object, e.g., rotate it, isolate and assess its certain parts, etc. This makes the training process more efficient and allows trainees to explore the object thoroughly, which might not be possible with physical assets put to use. At the same time, businesses can gather 3D models based on digital twins to build up a knowledge base available 24/7 for anyone who needs it.
Enhanced Product Quality
Digital twins give you a virtual copy of your products you can test in any way and under any conditions you want with almost zero risk to your assets. You can simulate any cases and situations to detect weak spots or evaluate how it will perform under certain conditions and then use these outcomes to improve your product.
Optimized Maintenance
If you create a digital twin of certain equipment pieces, you have a chance to implement predictive maintenance, a practice that implies real-time monitoring of assets and detecting when maintenance is needed to prevent any breakage from actually happening. This way, companies are able to cut their expenses by avoiding sudden budget-intensive breakdowns and downtimes, as well as reduce accidents and prolong equipment lifetime.
Improved Efficiency
Digital twins enable advanced visibility across whole operational processes, and they can reveal the aspects business executives might launch optimization to remove abundant activities, cut costs, improve performance, reduce errors and losses, etc.
Continuous Improvement
Visibility and visualization are woven into the concept of digital twins, and these two aspects uncover specific insights and a deeper understanding of how companies operate. This reveals dozens of opportunities for businesses to constantly improve their operations, processes, products, and customer services, start sustainability initiatives, pick more reliable supply chain partners, or reduce time-to-market, etc.
Improved Supply Chain
Digital twins can mimic not only products and assets but processes, e.g., in the supply chain. Companies can generate new strategies for logistics to optimize the usage of available resources like trucks and drivers to get more value. Moreover, companies don’t need to implement new approaches blindly in real conditions and wait to measure the results but rather test the efficiency of any idea in a digital dimension beforehand.
New Market Opportunities
The implementation of digital twins can also bring extra opportunities in terms of new business models or product launches. For example, companies might use their digital twin to power up small-batch manufacturing or provide their clients with enhanced analytics data valuable for their business and get an additional source of income.
In Conclusion
The biggest value of digital twins is their capacity to perform as real-life analogs. As a result, companies access a strong source of insights and an asset to run risk-free testing and hypothesis validation. And while the implementation of digital twins remains a pretty demanding project, businesses try to get the maximum value from it and hence leverage the technology to solve several issues at once.
