Complex and intersecting technological systems, such as air traffic control, are interconnected systems, including the Internet of Things, Software-defined Networks, IT platforms, and applications. They potentially generate enormous value from communication and data network effects. Humans, however, find it impossible to put their heads around them. Hence, lurking opportunities for optimization go unnoticed due to the limitations of human cognition.
Digital Twins bring visibility to complex systems by creating the virtual schematics of physical systems, visualizing them, simulating them in virtual reality, and integrating them with data sources from the Internet of Things to gain situational awareness for decision-making. They also act like 3D holograms of complex systems, such as connected factories, that afford opportunities for the remote control to allocate resources, optimize them, or execute functions for maintenance.
5G Private networks create the environment for rapidly and securely aggregating the data and the content from all subsystems for digital twins to use. The data shows the interdependencies and interactions to examine decision-making scenarios, find opportunities for creating business value, deploy and control systems for reaping the value of network effects.
Digital twins are most valuable when they bring together the information from all systems and visualize the interdependencies between them and the impacts as they interact with each other. A complete picture of the interdependent systems becomes possible when the data trapped in each of them flows for it to be aggregated in a repository and visualized from a common interface. The adoption of digital twins is accelerating as the gates for information flows from heterogeneous systems are opened with a reference information architecture to share data across a diversity of systems.
Adoption of digital twins in complex systems
Digital twins have the momentum to expand their usage in 2021 and beyond. IDC projects that by 2022, 40 percent of IoT platform vendors will integrate simulation platforms, systems, and capabilities to create digital twins. Seventy percent of manufacturers are using the technology to conduct process simulations and scenario evaluations.
A typical case is that of Unilever that has created a digital twin of dozens of factories worldwide. It can monitor the flow of work-in-progress in its factories and the supply chain across the value chain from a remote location. Management can grasp potential challenges from a snapshot view of its operations provided by the digital twin.
Uses of digital twins
Vehicle battery manufacturer, Hyperbat, has created a virtual reality digital twin to provide a standard interface for all its teams spread across the United Kingdom to connect, collaborate, and interact with each other. Team members can walk around the digital model as they confer with their peers and discuss opportunities for reducing the time of product life cycle from design to manufacture. BT and Ericsson’s digital twin lives in a 5G private network with VR headsets supported by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform.
Digital twins help align office and field staff by resolving differences in perceptions quickly. At construction sites, the common problem is to ensure that the designs are communicated accurately to construction workers to make sure they are in line with the actual dimensions in the real world. Often, the designs are adjusted after back-and-forth communication between the architects and the engineers at the construction site that can be time-consuming and fraught with the risk of human error.
Obayashi in Japan used a digital twin with embedded mixed reality to iron out the differences in perceptions among workers. It could not afford a delay in communications because it was working on a project at a railway station where the duration of activity was limited to the time between the last train at night and the first train the following day. The job assigned to each worker was cut out from the digital twin and displayed in mixed reality on an iPad. Both sides had a shared view to avoid miscommunication to make adjustments as needed interactively.
Private networks at the edge bring partners together
Digital twin operations need the collaboration of multiple partners capable of integrating the Internet of Things, XReality technologies, data curation and analytics, and High-Performance Computing. The operational challenges are growing exponentially as multiple digital twins interconnect. Networking protocols are evolving with the growing need to interconnect a diversity of partners with open standards. Hyperscale cloud companies and public service providers with private networks are integrating their networks to cope with digital twins’ unique communication and data processing challenges.
Ericsson set up a digital twin of its production processes within the private network in its factory. It visualized machine-to-machine messages on its digital twin to track the reason for material shortages in its factory, which it overcame. It is increasingly focused on using digital twins to streamline operations for Industry 4.0, which is a new generation of flexible automation interconnecting computing and software-defined networks across a facility for synchronized operations of machines, collaborative robots, drones, and autonomous mobile assets.
AT&T and Verizon are eyeing the expanding Industry 4.0 opportunity, including digital twins, collaborate with Ericsson and Nokia to provide private networks.
Altran, systems integrator for digital twins, in collaboration with Ori Industries, is bringing open-source software-based federated MECs to make it easier for developers to build applications for Industry 4.0 and deliver them over private networks. It specializes in integrating data flows into digital twins within an enterprise or all along its value chain to uncover opportunities for performance improvement or product innovation. Both Altran and Ori Industries are members of the Linux Foundation’s Edge Foundation.
Ansys, a digital twin simulation software provider, collaborates with Microsoft Azure’s IoT services to draw on data from sensors to conduct simulations for improving operations.
The Digital Twin Consortium collaborates with Linux Foundation’s EdgeX Foundry to encourage open standards to develop complex digital twin applications across multiple enterprises and geographies.
Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins model the real physical world and provide live, up-to-date representations, and visualize it on a graph. One of its key customers, Bentley, integrates IoT data from construction facilities on the Azure cloud.
Samsung is building digital twin applications that will extend into the 6G environment. It will afford opportunities to observe changes in the industrial operating systems and detect problems as they occur. It will also embed actuators for remote control of systems.
Conclusion
Digital Twins are the culmination of digital transformation beyond robotic process automation to data aggregation, visualization, and analysis for decision-making to achieve business goals. The cascading growth in data volumes is calling for a leap in network management. Private networks will play a key role as they secure data flows. Open standards will pave the way for multiple partners to co-operate and build applications at the edge. Cloud companies will be the key to scale digital twins for the extended enterprise and incorporate data from the IoT.
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