Why it’s time to bust the myths that are hampering digital twin adoption
The idea that only large businesses can benefit from the insight provided by digital twins is just one of the misconceptions that are preventing organisations from investing in the technology.
In 1970, the Apollo 13 mission suffered a terrible mid-flight malfunction. To diagnose and remediate the problem, Nasa engineers built a ‘mirrored’ system to simulate the spacecraft and test various courses of action before deciding what to do next. The astronauts were saved, largely thanks to what many believe is the first example of a ‘digital twin’ being employed to solve a problem.
With innovations in artificial intelligence and simulation modelling, today’s digital twin technology looks very different. Enabling something of a virtual testing laboratory, a digital twin will run alongside and in constant sync with a live system and offers the prospect of real-time monitoring as well as improvements in process efficiency. Fed by data from across an organisation’s workflow and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, the model creates an accurate replica of operations and processes that planners can use to run simulations. By playing around with configurations, they can test different scenarios and outcomes, effectively fast-forwarding to find out the impact of any decision before it is implemented in the real world.
Every single type of business can benefit from level of insight; so what’s holding so many of them back?
There is a persistent myth that digital twins are the preserve of large-scale companies capable of making a huge investment in IT and technology to produce complicated and futuristic models of their operations. The good news is that this is not the case. In fact, the technology has now been democratised to a point that just about any business can tap into the benefits of these tools. It’s not about creating a large and complicated replica of an entire organisation, but about zoning in on individual processes to find ways to streamline and improve them, or to plan ahead to deal with any possible contingency. And it’s not the IT department that needs to drive this centrally – any level of planner can create, update and manage today’s digital twins.
Given how affordable and accessible they are, it’s baffling that digital twins are not treated as a core driver of efficiency within businesses of all shapes and sizes, and across multiple sectors. With such gains to be made, we should expect to see organisations creating a multitude of digital twins to cover every key operational process to ensure that it’s being delivered to its optimum and can be updated quickly with any changes in circumstances, such as a late supplier, a fault in the production line or a sudden surge in demand.
In 1970, the Apollo 13 mission suffered a terrible mid-flight malfunction. To diagnose and remediate the problem, Nasa engineers built a ‘mirrored’ system to simulate the spacecraft and test various courses of action before deciding what to do next. The astronauts were saved, largely thanks to what many believe is the first example of a ‘digital twin’ being employed to solve a problem.
With innovations in artificial intelligence and simulation modelling, today’s digital twin technology looks very different. Enabling something of a virtual testing laboratory, a digital twin will run alongside and in constant sync with a live system and offers the prospect of real-time monitoring as well as improvements in process efficiency. Fed by data from across an organisation’s workflow and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, the model creates an accurate replica of operations and processes that planners can use to run simulations. By playing around with configurations, they can test different scenarios and outcomes, effectively fast-forwarding to find out the impact of any decision before it is implemented in the real world.
Every single type of business can benefit from level of insight; so what’s holding so many of them back?
There is a persistent myth that digital twins are the preserve of large-scale companies capable of making a huge investment in IT and technology to produce complicated and futuristic models of their operations. The good news is that this is not the case. In fact, the technology has now been democratised to a point that just about any business can tap into the benefits of these tools. It’s not about creating a large and complicated replica of an entire organisation, but about zoning in on individual processes to find ways to streamline and improve them, or to plan ahead to deal with any possible contingency. And it’s not the IT department that needs to drive this centrally – any level of planner can create, update and manage today’s digital twins.
Given how affordable and accessible they are, it’s baffling that digital twins are not treated as a core driver of efficiency within businesses of all shapes and sizes, and across multiple sectors. With such gains to be made, we should expect to see organisations creating a multitude of digital twins to cover every key operational process to ensure that it’s being delivered to its optimum and can be updated quickly with any changes in circumstances, such as a late supplier, a fault in the production line or a sudden surge in demand.
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