John Clemons is a Solution Consultant for Rockwell Automation. He’s been working in the field of Manufacturing Technology for over 30 years.
Building resiliency into manufacturing enterprise operations requires people and technology. Without the people, the technology will sit there, and without the technology, the people will sit there. Both people and technology are needed to get the job done.
The good news is that there are lots of technologies out there to help people build resilient manufacturing operations. In previous articles, we’ve discussed artificial intelligence (AI), manufacturing execution systems (MES), manufacturing operations management (MOM) and several other technologies. Another technology in the spotlight and worthy of discussion is the digital twin.
Digital Twin—A Virtual Replica
Briefly defined, the digital twin is a working virtual replica of a physical asset. The key is to make the digital twin function just like the equipment. A good digital twin can be used in dozens of different ways. Most of these uses fall into the categories of design, operation and maintenance.
Design
The digital twin helps design new pieces of equipment or make design changes to the equipment, like when the equipment must be used to make different products. One or more digital twins can be used to design a new manufacturing line, and the latest digital twin applications are used to design entire manufacturing facilities.
With the digital twin, you can design your equipment, your line or even your whole facility and make sure it’s right and working properly in the computer before building it in the physical world.
Operation
The digital twin is used to optimize the equipment, the production processes and even the entire manufacturing line or facility. The digital twin is used to test the equipment and the production line in stressful situations, such as high speeds and product volumes.
A great tool for operator training, the digital twin lets operators run the equipment’s digital version before they run the physical version. This tool greatly reduces risk and improves operator capabilities, all in the computer environment. They are trained on the equipment and on realistic operating conditions, even fault conditions before they run the real-world version.
Maintenance
The digital twin is used to maintain and troubleshoot equipment. It manages the various maintenance regimens, whether it’s preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance, condition-based maintenance or a combination. People can determine when something is wrong with a physical asset and can quickly and easily fix it before it breaks down.
The Real Difference
Design, operation and maintenance are areas where the digital twin is used and where it makes a real impact on the shop floor. But the real difference between today’s digital twins and other attempts at replication is the ability to connect the digital twin to the physical twin.
For example, improving the equipment design to manufacture a new product requires getting a real-world run of the current product into the digital twin from the physical twin. Not a computer scenario but the actual real-world data from the physical twin. That digital copy of the real world is used to make the design changes for the new product and fully test them.
In operation, using the real-world data from the physical twin means that the operators are training on the real equipment. It also means that you’re optimizing the equipment and the production line using real-world data, not simulated data. As conditions on the shop floor change, getting more real-world data is simple and easy and makes sure you’re training and optimizing using the latest real-world data.
In maintenance, connecting to the real world means that you can troubleshoot the problem, not troubleshoot a computer scenario. You have the real-world data, so you not only see what’s going on but also see how predictive maintenance and condition-based maintenance make sense and have a bigger impact. You can also train maintenance people using real-world data.
Making It Work
The digital twin is a sophisticated tool. It must be a true working virtual replica of the physical asset. Anything short of that means problems. To make it all work, consider several key aspects.
You will most likely need multiple digital twins of the same physical asset. At least one digital twin should be online most of the time, collecting data from the real world. Other copies of the digital twin might be offline at times, but they use the real-world data in various training situations and for optimizing the equipment and the line. Getting data from the real world into the digital twin is one of the best and most common uses for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
The latest digital twins are incorporating AI to help optimize the design process, learn from previous designs and create new equipment designs. AI helps create operator training scenarios and optimizes the equipment and production line. AI learns from the optimization process and, even with new wrinkles thrown into the real world, learns how to optimize the optimization process. It helps troubleshoot the equipment, finding problems quickly, long before they become problems.
Conclusion
Manufacturing enterprises want to build better manufacturing operations that are more resilient. Part of that means getting better at designing, operating and maintaining physical assets.
Digital twins are created specifically to help design, operate and maintain assets better, faster and cheaper. When digital twins are connected to the real world through the IIoT, the capabilities are endless. Using real-world data, they help make everything work. Adding AI to digital twins makes them smarter, and the results and the impact are much more significant.
Digital twins help make design changes to equipment and processes to support product variations. New products are produced a whole lot faster and easier. Optimizing equipment and production lines and training operators is also so much simpler and faster, as is troubleshooting equipment and decreasing downtime.
In short, the digital twin is a great tool to help build better, more resilient manufacturing operations.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
link