However, many factory planners are also now realizing the potential of building 3D digital twins of their facilities. Factory teams are constantly testing new technologies in order to see which stand to truly enhance their supply chains and which don’t. Naturally, this discourages manufacturers to experiment with different technologies and changes to their normal production processes.Â, Digital twin manufacturing examples and use cases can span across several parts of the production process. The IFS executive cites a study by the IT consultancy IDC that estimates investment in digital twinning yields a 30% improvement in cycle times of critical processes, including maintenance. 3 Other widely circulated definitions describe the digital twin as a sensor-enabled digital model of a physical object that simulates the object in a live setting. Even a short stall in production or a single malfunctioning piece of hardware can be disastrous for a factory that’s had its supply chain uprooted and stock depleted during times of quarantine. Of course, manufacturers have started to address these concerns with tech-based strategies revolving around resourceful applications of industrial PCs. 4 Manufacturing Technology Insights magazine features the latest digital twin news and updates. Industrial IoT: Rise of Digital Twin in Manufacturing Sector. Digital twin technology is software solution that uses sensors, cameras, and other forms of IoT data collection to create a virtual model of a process or product that not only interactively updates with its physical counterpart, but can also be used to test how the part or process responds in different scenarios. By removing some of the risks inherent in testing new production processes, supply chains, and products, digital twin driven smart manufacturing has proved an essential boon for those still producing during these tumultuous times.Â. The digital twin is a digital representation or model of a product, process, or system that mirrors a company's machines, controls, workflows, or systems. Whether that drop be occurring due to a faulty machine, a lack of staff at a crucial station, or any other reason, the digital replica can allow users to pinpoint the flaw and make efforts to alleviate it. Discover How, Knowledge and Help for PTC Technology Users, Share an idea or get an answer from customer support forums and blogs, Access the ThingWorx and Vuforia developer portals and tools, Flexible learning experiences to enable you to reach your goals, Products and resources to empower K12–college students and educators, Experience the value of PTC’s Technologies That’s where the digital twin comes into play.Â. Using this data, programs are able to create a near one-to-one replication of the hardware or process in question, making it a phenomenal playground for manufacturers to test all manner of changes to supply chains, production, or even a product design. Â, The digital twin in manufacturing is an innovation that’s been around for quite some time but has continued to see popular use during these tougher times in manufacturing’s history. Additionally, you’ll want computers capable of gathering data from these sensors and also functioning as workstations for your factory floor workers.Â, Din rail computers built to be industrial grade are designed to integrate with IoT connectible devices and can go a long way towards vaulting your operation further into smart manufacturing, digital twin technology, and all the benefits that come along with it. Therefore, this section discusses the academic and theoretical defi ition of the Digital Twin concept and its different levels f integratio , followed by an overview of the fields of observation in context to manufacturing and the key digital technologies. Now let’s explore how Digital Twin technology can simulate product use. These benefits are being recognized by manufacturers today. As we mentioned, digital twin applications can be employed across several stages of production, including the machine maintenance stage. Going through this digital process, line managers can make hypothetical changes to the production line and see where the drops in quality are occurring. What recent drops in the manufacturing sector and available workforce have shown us, however, is which technological advancements deserve prioritization in the coming years. The digital twin in manufacturing is an innovation that’s been around for quite some time but has continued to see popular use during these tougher times in manufacturing’s history. Below are only a few instances where smart manufacturing with the aid of digital twin programs can help diminish downtime and lost productivity,Â, When creating a product, it’s incredibly demoralizing to spend hours and hours on ideation, only to finally create the product and realize there are a host of issues to address or that, even worse, the product isn’t fit to be made at all. Manufacturing operations are increasingly complex as the real-time, flawless performance of myriad assets are a necessity and differentiation through digital transformation is becoming a required strategic initiative. In fact, according to a recent survey by Juniper Research, global spending on digital twin driven smart manufacturing is expected to rise by 17% despite complications brought on by COVID-19. That’s where, in conjunction with proper hardware such as industrial grade PCs and IoT capable machinery, the software-based digital twin in manufacturing can help. Digital Twin: How It’s Optimizing Manufacturing Operations. The physical manufacturing objects are virtualized and represented as digital twin models (avatars) seamlessly and closely integrated in both the physical and cyber spaces. A Whitepaper by Dr. Michael Grieves This paper introduces the concept of a “Digital Twin” as a virtual representation of what has been produced. Digital twins are now being used to manage the performance, effectiveness, and quality of a manufacturer’s fixed assets such as manufacturing machines, lines, and plants. Some considerations need to be made, of course, when picking workstation computers for your floor.Â. Fanless designs that are IP65 certified, for example, protect against debris ingress while also delivering the added benefit of making the devices resilient against abrasive sanitation products, allowing them to be cleaned more often which will be necessary coming out of a global pandemic. In the Industry 4.0 era, the Digital Twin (DT), virtual copies of the system that are able to interact with the physical counterparts in a bi-directional way, seem to be promising enablers to replicate production systems in real time and analyse them. They can be implemented for an entire facility, a particular asset within the facility, or solely for a product in the field. A digital twin is a virtual model that mirrors a physical object or process throughout its lifecycle. The manufacturing sector is experiencing a technological paradigm shift, where new digital technologies can help digitalize product design, production systems, and manufacturing processes and generate more data. Yet with increasing global competition and disruptive marketplaces there is still internal resistance with the current cross-exchanging of physical and digital information in a manufacturer’s operations between products, processes, and people, within different value chain functions. As manufacturers respond to a manufacturing recession, they’re taking great efforts to mitigate any downtime in their production efforts. Its value is its ability to take real-world data about an object or process as inputs and produce outputs that are predications or simulations of how the object or process will be affected by those inputs. The variety in manufacturing roles and worker tasks is immense; a manager must be aware of the entire factory and production visibility, whereas floor staff will only be concerned with a few specific metrics and performance of machines. With digital twin technology in manufacturing, plans and blueprints for a machine or product can be put into a program, creating a digital replica of your theorized product. Providing a near real-time bridge between the physical and digital worlds, this technology enables you to remotely monitor and control equipment and systems. For example, according to some, a digital twin is an integrated model of an as-built product that is intended to reflect all manufacturing defects and be continually updated to include the wear and tear sustained while in use. Digital-Twin Technology in Manufacturing and Beyond With their ability to enable predictive maintenance, digital twins are an ideal technology for high-risk industries. Think of them as a kind of digital backup of an important asset that can be safely edited without fear of damaging the real asset. A general manager’s job is to drive overall throughput and production volume, which requires timely insights into the facility’s overall equipment effectiveness, changeover, and downtime. Production environments are extremely intricate as a mix of paper-based and digitized information is constantly flowing from facility-to-facility, workstation-to-workstation, and throughout a product’s lifetime and real-world deployment. An HMI inclusive of a digital twin with overlaid contextualized information can drastically improve a technician’s service KPIs or an operator’s assets uptime. 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