Cloud-based digital twins help identify anomalies and minimize disruptions.
Honeywell’s new Digital Prime, a cloud-based platform for control systems, will give industrial engineers the ability to simulate, track, manage and test system changes before and after implementation on the factory floor. The “lab system as a service,” as the multinational, engineering and industrial technology producer describes it, is set to be released in November. It will aid engineers modifying, updating and testing both in-service industrial operations and those being developed. As a result, Honeywell claims it can reduce failure rates by 40 percent, repair times by 20 percent and unnecessary preventative maintenance by up to 70 percent.
“Cloud and digital twins enable engineers to explore and learn in a risk-free environment,” says Tiffany Barnes, senior offering manager at Honeywell Process Solutions. “Gone are the days of on-the-job training in high stress environments where safety of people and process are at risk. Cloud based digital twins are accessible from anywhere, enabling engineers to learn, develop, test and advance.”
Honeywell will host and maintain the tool, eliminating the need for customers to purchase hardware. Another advantage of Digital Prime is that Honeywell will maintain the platform’s security and its one-to-one mirroring of real-world assets. The platform will use multi-factor authentication to ensure only authorized parties access information.
Digital Prime will help engineers remotely perform tasks like deployment and synchronization. Other use cases include remote factory acceptance tests (FAT), digital management of chance (MOC) and impact analyses of said changes. As all of these processes are done in a digital simulation these activities pose no risk to workers, property or product. This also makes it the perfect training tool as it offers a safe space for people to test the system.
Reducing the Downtime and Training—Just in Time
Now that we’re a few years into pandemic recovery, industrial organizations have seen an increase in product demand. Additionally, due to customer, consumer and government pressures, companies have put a greater focus on implementing environmentally sustainable solutions. The pandemic also influenced many older industrial engineers to retire. These challenges and the loss of leadership can be a great hinderance to any organization.
Digital Prime addresses these concerns by simulating industrial processes on a facility wide scale. This enables engineers to not only test out changes to the environment—without risking the facility—it also reduces on-the-job training in high-stress environments by replacing it with virtual interactions with the digital twin. The platform provides a way for engineers to review the performance of additions, patches, upgrades and other changes. It also enables them to play around with what-if scenarios that would otherwise be off the table for active facilities.
“This landscape of IT-OT convergence is a real time evolution, and every customer is navigating this journey at their own pace,” says Barnes. “What has been pushing our customers to learn and adopt is a mega trend related to skills gaps and resource constraints. Because of this, our customers need to leverage domain experts, regardless of their locations. Pushing the need for cloud-based solutions, where access can happen from anywhere. In terms of technology, the cloud plays a key role in flexibility and scalability. It enables our customers to have full scale digital twins for a fraction of the investment, and as their production systems evolve the cloud based digital twin is easily adaptable.”
What a Digital Twin Can Accomplish
Companies that do not update their digital twin are likely to generate inaccurate data. This leads to the development of inadequate solutions. In contrast, Digital Prime will continuously update production changes to create an accurate and dependable digital twin.
Digital Prime enables industrial engineers to model a wide variety of scenarios, from everyday service to catastrophic failures. For example, an oil company could use Digital Prime to produce a damage control and remediation plan for oil spills.
After understanding how the scenario would play out, engineers could simulate changes to better prepare for the event. They could undertake all these tasks without physical oil leaks or disruptions to the company’s production system. Modeling with Digital Prime would show the delays, challenges and developments the company could experience during these processes.
Digital Prime is supported by Honeywell Trace, the company’s data collection software and change management system. The tool is included as standard with a Digital Prime subscription. It assists with troubleshooting and project planning because it captures and records configuration data. The app aids engineers by identifying engineering anomalies and eliminating errors. Trace can take system snapshots every three to four hours and proactively detect and record changes.
Honeywell’s Security Measures
Companies that do not use digital twins often resolve problems with dedicated hardware. That hardware may be vulnerable to security breaches, which could slow or stop problem resolution.
In contrast, Honeywell is utilizing several methods to ensure its private cloud is secure and accessible. Vmware, the cloud computing company, will provide Digital Prime’s infrastructure and help continually update the system.
Customers can also save on anti-malware protection, as this will be built into the VMware infrastructure. The method of setup means that there are no network paths between different customers. There are also no network paths between a virtual machine and a customer’s operating system.
Honeywell’s SaaS platform undergoes an annual audit against ISO/IEC 27001, the international standard to manage information security. The company has held a current certification for the last three years and engages in several practices to ensure high security. These include daily scans of the infrastructure to identify security concerns and backups of the entire infrastructure.
Hosting the platform in a private cloud also offers industrial organizations the chance to save money, as they no longer need to pay for additional IT support or training. However, Honeywell’s hosting of the cloud still enables its customers to tailor the system to their needs.
Digital Prime is an example of how corporations continue to expand their use of digital technologies. According to projections from San Francisco-based Grand View Research, the global digital twin market size is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 37.5 percent between 2023 and 2030. Digital technologies reduce the demand for travel and facilitate collaboration between employees in different locations. Although digital twins do not totally replace on-site tests, they limit the need for physical tests. Further, digital twins help engineers improve systems without significant rework.
