Book Image

Building Industrial Digital Twins

By : Shyam Varan Nath, Pieter van Schalkwyk
Book Image

Building Industrial Digital Twins

By: Shyam Varan Nath, Pieter van Schalkwyk

Overview of this book

Digital twin technology enables organizations to create digital representations of physical entities such as assets, systems, and processes throughout their life cycle. It improves asset performance, utilization, and safe operations and reduces manufacturing, operational, and maintenance costs. The book begins by introducing you to the concept of digital twins and sets you on a path to develop a digital twin strategy to positively influence business outcomes in your organization. You'll understand how digital twins relate to physical assets, processes, and technology and learn about the prerequisite conditions for the right platform, scale, and use case of your digital twins. You'll then get hands-on with Microsoft's Azure Digital Twins platform for your digital twin development and deployment. The book equips you with the knowledge to evaluate enterprise and specialty platforms, including the cloud and industrial IoT required to set up your digital twin prototype. Once you've built your prototype, you'll be able to test and validate it relative to the intended purpose of the twin through pilot deployment, full deployment, and value tracking techniques. By the end of this book, you'll have developed the skills to build and deploy your digital twin prototype, or minimum viable twin, to demonstrate, assess, and monitor your asset at specific stages in the asset life cycle.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Defining Digital Twins
4
Section 2: Building the Digital Twin
10
Section 3: Enhancing the Digital Twin
12
Interview on Digital Twins with William (Bill) Ruh, CEO of Lendlease Digital
13
Interview on Digital Twins with Anwar Ahmed, CTO - Digital Services at GE Renewable Energy

Summary

In this chapter, we started by taking a brief look at the history of Digital Twins and the original intent behind the concept. We discussed the difference between discrete and composite Digital Twins, and then we identified the elements required for something to qualify as a Digital Twin. We introduced several typical use cases across the life cycle of a Digital Twin, discussed the difference between a Digital Twin and a Digital Thread, and provided guidance on describing the value proposition of a Digital Twin. Our Digital Twin prioritization matrix provides a framework to perform a high-level assessment of the use cases for your first DTP.

You now have an understanding of what a Digital Twin is, its key characteristics, the value of a Digital Twin, and assessing where a Digital Twin may apply in your business.

The remaining chapters will guide you through building your first Digital Twin, beginning with planning your Digital Twin, identifying the right candidate for your first Digital Twin, and then providing guidance on setting up, building, deploying, and validating the outcomes of your DTP.