Digital twins, which are the extended application of simulation and visualization throughout a digitally transformed organization can offer better communication and collaboration and therefore can be a good management tool, according to a new study.
International Data Corp., released a study on August 6, , IDC TechScape: Worldwide Digital Twins, 2019, that focuses on the transformational, incremental, and opportunistic technologies necessary for successful digital twin implementation and operation.
The IDC TechScape is an evaluation model based on a comprehensive framework and a set of parameters that assess a technology's adoption progress relative to one another and to those factors expected to be most conducive to success in a given market over both the short term and long term. This new IDC TechScape defines the technology that manufacturers can use to build digital twins of varying complexity, including product, asset, supply chain process, and production process twins, and outlines three technology adoption curves: transformational, incremental, and opportunistic, which shows rate and time to adoption of each digital twin technology.
The starting points and use cases for digital twins of product and assets will differ by company size, industry, and need, but the value derived by all manufacturers will be similar — clarity of communication; rapid collaboration; holistic visibility; accurate, efficient response to demand; monetization of IoT data; predictive, proactive service; and closer collaboration with customers.
"The value of digital twins lies in flexible data visualization. That is, the complex data model that is a digital twin should be synchronous and secure, enabling different domains across the organization to view the level of information and knowledge they want to see, whether that is a lightweight model or a detailed, complex view. said Jeff Hojlo, program director, Product Innovation Strategies.
“Digital twins have been in use within manufacturing engineering and R&D workgroups for years — the difference today is, due to 3rd Platform technology, these flexible models can be deployed across the value chain of the digitally transformed organization as a decision support enabler," Hojlo added.
Digital twins can be applied throughout the modern, digitally transformed business, within R&D and engineering workgroups, extended to business and technical domains from business line management to product management, sales and marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, and service.
There is a set of fundamental 2nd Platform technologies (enterprise applications) that provide foundational data and business process support to digital twins, which are already in place in most organizations today. As companies digitally transform and deploy 3rd Platform technologies, digital twins can be deployed throughout the organization, inside and outside, as an accelerator of planning, design, development, collaboration, communication, and operation.