One of five key tech trends shaping how engineers work today, the CDT connects the real and digital worlds.
Siemens has sponsored this post. Written by Dale Tutt, Vice President of Industry Strategy, Siemens Digital Industries Software.
The digital twin is commonly understood as a virtual representation of a physical object or product. This virtual representation may include design, simulation or other models that evolve and change over time as the product, process or other physical object it represents matures. In other words, the digital twin merges the virtual and real world, blurring the boundaries between engineering and process domains.
This conception of the digital twin, however, is too limited when considered in relation to the challenges facing companies today. Complexity is growing, costs are rising, and the nature of the workforce across engineering and production teams is changing. Overcoming these challenges requires a commitment to widespread digitalization and a much broader conception of what the digital twin is and what it can do.
The solutions of the future will depend on a comprehensive digital twin that encompasses all cross-domain models and data, from mechanical CAD and CAE to software code, bills-of-materials, bills-of-process and more.
This comprehensive digital twin (CDT) has the following characteristics:
- Offers a precise virtual representation of the product or process flow that matches the exact physical form, functions and behavior of the product and its configurations.
- Participates across the product and process lifecycle to simulate, predict and optimize the product and production system used to create the product.
- Connects real-world operational data back into product design and production over the lifetime of the product to continuously improve quality, efficiency and quickly respond to customer demands or market conditions.
The comprehensive digital twin continues to evolve and mature along with the product as functions are refined, simulations are completed, test results gathered and design changes are implemented. With connections to the IoT and cloud-based data analytics, the comprehensive digital twin also operates as part of a closed-loop feedback mechanism between the product design, the production system and the product in the field. This creates an integrated system to validate, compare and optimize behavior between the physical assets and the comprehensive digital twin.
Not only does this deliver benefits in the short term, but also this data offers ongoing advantages as re-use can help to accelerate design assessments and tradeoff analyses, leading to faster decisions. Moreover, the comprehensive digital twin enables companies to design, build and optimize next-generation products faster and cheaper than ever, with fewer prototypes, fewer tests and less waste during production. The result is a distinct competitive advantage in meeting growing customer demands for greater performance and smarter features while also helping to overcome the challenges of growing complexity, shifting workforces and the need for sustainable designs.
The CDT delivers the physical-to-virtual interface, connecting real and digital and providing the material foundation to products, processes and other data held in the virtual world. On top of this foundation, several other key technologies will help enhance the power of the CDT, increase the richness of the data available, and even empower new ways of collaborating and working.
Five trends and technologies for the future
The first of these is software and systems engineering (SSE). SSE is a methodology that establishes a connective development process enabling engineers to design products in concert between domains rather than in isolation. It helps create a robust digital thread of design data, test results, simulations and other artifacts of product development, ensuring this data is accessible when and where it is needed. As software continues to make up a larger portion of products of all types, SSE will prove critical to managing data from throughout the product development lifecycle.
Next, the convergence of information and operation technologies (IT/OT) is a major focus for the manufacturing and design ecosystems. IT/OT convergence will provide greater flexibility and visibility, empowering manufacturers to make highly informed decisions through real-time process monitoring of the shop floor. IT/OT convergence also enables managers to easily assess the business impact of manufacturing activity, and it supports and encourages collaboration across planning, scheduling and factory performance, leading to superior efficiency.
As more data is generated and injected into the design and production ecosystem, companies will seek methods of managing and analyzing that data to deliver insights. Artificial intelligence (AI) will be critical to increasing the processing speed and throughput of data, enabling accelerated product and process evaluation and innovation. Today, AI can help automate mundane tasks, leaving engineers more time to focus on solving design challenges. In the future, it can begin to automate more complex tasks and realize a larger impact on the design and optimization of future products.
Finally, the industrial metaverse (IM) continues to show potential for reinventing how products are designed, manufactured and maintained. Critically, by applying the physics mastered in the CDT to the industrial metaverse, we have the potential to create a shared and immersive environment where learning is faster and more intuitive, design concepts are more easily understood, and where new ideas can be investigated quickly and thoroughly to drive innovation for the future.
In a new series of articles, my colleagues and I will examine each of these technologies and how they can combine to empower companies for the future. Each of the technologies and trends presented above are part of a larger push for digital transformation. Mastering and synthesizing these technologies will enable companies to progress on their digital journeys, attaining higher levels of maturity and enabling powerful capabilities like generative design and closed-loop optimization.
The complexity of product development, manufacturing and business processes will continue to grow. Companies that embrace the digital transformation journey will be positioned to overcome the challenges on the horizon and surge ahead of the competition.
Learn more at Siemens Digital Industries Software.
About the author:
