WINNING AT TWINNING

WINNING AT TWINNING WHY DIGITAL TWINNING IS AN ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITION FOR BUSINESSES TRYING TO SQUEEZE MORE VALUE OUT OF THEIR PHYSICAL ASSETS AND PROCESSES.

Put simply, a digital twin is a virtual replica of physical assets that allows users to leverage real-world data to create simulations to predict how a system or process will perform. The increasing use of IoT is fueling the adoption of digital twin technology, and Gartner estimates that over two-thirds of companies that have implemented IoT would have deployed at least one digital twin in production by 2022.

Imagine being able to see how a jet engine would perform if you install a particular upgrade, which takes it out of service for one to two days. Is that upgrade worth the loss of the engine service for two days? A digital twin would help you to make an informed choice. GE estimates that 6000 plus industrial assets have saved more than $1.6 billion for customers, on hardware assets worth $9.5 billion using digital twin technology.

“Digital twins provide the ability to create a virtual replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems, and devices that can be used for various purposes,” says Dr. Tariq Aslam, Head of MEA, AVEVA. “Organisations use the technology for many reasons including testing new assets or procedures before launching them in the real world, where it becomes more expensive and complicated to fix any issues, the improvement of ongoing operations or training employees. In practical terms, this type of technology can help improve the safety on an oil rig, improve the efficiency of a production plant, or ensuring buildings meet sustainability, efficiency or regulatory requirements.”

Mejdi El-Khater, Country Manager of IBM Qatar, says the concept of the digital twin, where we take the physical elements into a digital virtual world has powerful implications to any product’s lifecycle from design (by improving

quality and decreasing development time), build (sustainability and lowering costs) and operations (reducing unplanned downtime and improved asset utilisation). “The ability to remotely control assets and perform tasks from around the globe is even more amplified given the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact globally.”

He says the benefits of the digital twin concept are evolutionary and attained in phases. It can be applied to just about anything we can measure, provided the access to data and reliable communications are in place. It also serves to digitise the business end-to-end in a transformative way with a lens to see the future by answering the question of “what if?” without impacting ongoing operations.

Mehmood Khan, IFS Managing Director, Middle East, adds the key benefit of using digital twin technology is that it can represent your whole organisation in digital form in near real time, capturing the strategic,

Dr. Tariq Aslam

tactical and operational relationships between different divisions, assets and personnel roles to allow more automated decision making. “This can lead to more efficient processes, reduced risk and maintenance costs across systems and the potential for new business opportunities through simulation modeling.”

How to create a digital twin strategy

A digital twin initiative is a transformative digital concept and will shape to change the way an organisation operates. “Multiple disruptive technological solutions compose a digital twin initiative. IBM’s own experience has a focused approach to building the right strategy for clients’ adoption and success in a co-creative manner. There is no single package or solution that provides a digital twin out of the box, yet there are elements and models that can be re-used and acquired (accelerating the time to deploy and attain results),” says El-Khater from IBM.

He stresses that essential steps in creating a digital twin strategy should start with defining the context and scope, zooming in on the parts of the process that would provide the quickest benefits and impact. “Once the business objectives and scope are defined, we move onwards with the

Mejdi El-Khater

technological aspects and architecture elements. Several criteria for success are evaluated and then only do we move to an implementation plan.” Re-usable assets can be brought in to complete digital twin projects, yet custom integration and data readiness tracks will be essential and inevitable.

In summary, there is no “one size fits all”, but there are processes to follow to ensure successful implementations and these are well-proven methods, El-Khater says.

Aslam from Aveva says companies should create a digital twin model that uses accurate data feeds to help understand product or operations performance and adjust critical control points to deliver short- and long-term value. “Identify where digital twin simulations and predictive maintenance can deliver the best value and build a digital twin architectural roadmap that enables program and project planning for digital transformation.”

According to GE, critical to your strategy will be protecting your assets by mitigating cybersecurity threats with real-time, active cyber defense solutions, such as digital ghost.

Once your foundations are in place, your twins should learn to talk. GE has developed an emergent language between wind turbines, for instance.

Mehmood Khan

If one has a creaky bearing or gets hacked, it can ask the other turbines for guidance, or it can issue a warning. This ‘closed loop’ can happen in microseconds, reducing the risk of failure.

Key challenges to success

Digital twin technology comes with its own set of challenges. “The increase in connectivity needed to run such a framework opens up vulnerabilities where the actual and digital systems meet, necessitating a strong focus on security. In addition, an increase in automation will change business practices within an organisation and processes that still require a human “in the loop” to ratify decisions will require transparency and trust. The visualisation capabilities of a digital twin framework can help in this regard, but it is important to make sure that underlying AI-based decisions are as explainable as possible as well,” says Khan from IFS.

EL-Khater lists some other critical roadblocks: “There are several challenges, but at the heart of these would be data readiness. Without the right data, we can have a nice schematic that has little value to properly demonstrate the physical world it represents. I would state that attaining the right sensory data benefit from the technology. More than and its quality for consumption as 150 companies now hold membership the number one challenge. The data in the consortium, which seeks to needs to be trusted, accurate and reduce the risk of implementing governed.” digital twin technology and improve

Skills availability to lead these interoperability, develop best programs is another challenge, these practices, and influence requirements initiatives are continuous journeys, for digital twin standards. clients are demanding skills to be in- Now the question is whether this house rather than sole dependence on technology has any use cases beyond suppliers. It is a digitally transformative manufacturing and supply chain program with clear differentiators to industries? Digital twins were originally early adopters in any industry, he adds. created for the space industry but now

Another issue is the lack of industry are increasingly common across many standards as not all digital twins industries, including power generation are created equal. Bodies like the and oil & gas industries. Digital Twin Consortium will play an “Gartner estimates that by 2021 important role in driving standards there will be over 25 billion Internet across industries so that digital twins of Things (IoT) endpoints and digital from a range of vendors can work twins will exist for potentially billions together to lower barriers to entry of scenarios. Benefits will include for industrial companies that want to asset optimisation, competitive differentiation and improved user experience. Digital twinning is fast becoming essential to IoT deployment as many more IoT platform providers and analytics companies are investing ONCE YOUR in digital twin technology. These cover functions from initial ideas, FOUNDATIONS ARE IN PLACE, YOUR through to design, development and construction,” says Aslam. El-Khater says there are other TWINS SHOULD interesting use cases, from F1 racing teams to cities (that are in their ownLEARN TO TALK. GE right an intricate set of connected HAS DEVELOPED devices, people and assets) being replicated in a digital world. Agriculture AN EMERGENT is another domain that has started to LANGUAGE BETWEEN use the concept in improving yield and decreasing environmental impact to WIND TURBINES, the soil. FOR INSTANCE. IF “Other sectors like public safety, security, health and pandemic disease ONE HAS A CREAKY management recently gaining priority BEARING OR GETS given the global COVID-19 spread. Our world delivers us the scenarios and HACKED, IT CAN ASK THE OTHER TURBINES the possibilities are abound. Today we recognise how technology can enable this digital world to run near real-life FOR GUIDANCE, simulations even from a single process flow level on a plant floor to a complex OR IT CAN ISSUE A representation of a densely populated WARNING. city undergoing an emergency response,” he sums up.