Watch the video recordings from our Enterprise Summit 2024: Best in XR, Digital Twin, AI here
Originally Published by Demund Cureton
Learning about how to implement digital twins can pose significant challenges for firms, however, there are even greater rewards when executed correctly, a panel of experts and executives said the VRARA Enterprise Summit’s Best in XR, Digital Twin, and AI event on Wednesday.
However, decision makers in the implementation and rollout of digital twin solutions must leverage the fast-growing emerging technology with care and purpose, according to the panel talks.
In a panel discussion, the following experts and executives offered their expertise in digital twins:
Kevin O Donovan, Co-Chair, Industrial Metaverse and Digital Twin Committee, VRARA
Peter Terwilliger, Director, Technical Sales, Dassault Systèmes
Dr Stefan Krug, Head of Digital Consistency, Siemens AG
The Art of the Possible (with the Digital)
Speaking on the subject of digital twins, many across industry verticals had many different perceptions of what they were, O’Donovan explained.
Kevin O Donovan, Co-Chair, Industrial Metaverse and Digital Twin Committee, VRARA
Referencing prior conversations, he continued that XR leaders in digital twins were growing the number of maturity models, adding firms like Siemens and Dassault Systèmes had built a massive numbers of use cases demonstrating “the art of the possible,” he explained.
Kevin O Donovan, Co-Chair, Industrial Metaverse and Digital Twin Committee, VRARA
Referencing prior conversations, he continued that XR leaders in digital twins were growing the number of maturity models, adding firms like Siemens and Dassault Systèmes had built a massive numbers of use cases demonstrating “the art of the possible,” he explained.
When asked by O’ Donovan about the significance of this statement, Terwilliger stated that digital twins were taking data from the real world to create a “feedback loop” that could improve current and future models.
He explained further,
“It’s being benchmarked against real-world data, but if it’s solar [power] systems, we take it to the next step and link the component to others, creating a process in a system. That system exists in an environment and its affected the the one it’s in. Add analysis and simulation [so that you can] then put in on the cloud, where its accessible to everyone.”
Terwilliger continued, stating that they allowed people to “understand the past, what the system had been engineered to do, and why.”
He added that it also showed how many people had done the engineering basis, design, and recreation [process] in their careers to understand “what’s happening now, how it’s actually behaving and working.”
Using the insights, people could “then navigate and predict the possibilities of an untested future.”
However, for simulating experiences virtually, digital twins were the “art of the possible, today.”
Using these virtual tools, companies and people could test and optimise new products, determine how to manufacture them, implement countermeasures against delays, as well as optimise, plan, and execute product life cycles.
He added,
You know, when I was in the industry [and] we wanted to change our assembly line — say we were in automotive and we had a bigger car — we used to make plywood mock-ups and we would take those mock-ups and we would walk around with those and walk them down the line, right? I mean… think about the time waste due to the lines being shut down while the people are working on mock-ups. It delayed us up to a month in our go-to-market strategy. So, you know, we don’t need to do that anymore, that’s what’s possible today.
Dr Stefan Krug, Head of Digital Consistency, Siemens AG
Adding to the discussion, Dr Krug stated that what his company could do with digital twins was “amazing.”
Dr Stefan Krug, Head of Digital Consistency, Siemens AG
He then cited an example of a project done in [Nanjing], China, where he was the project manager. Using Siemens digital twin technologies, the company developed a greenfield factory in virtual space.
The digital twin could simulate all operations performed on-site, including product manufacturing, develoopment, value streams, material flows, and construction, he continued.
“We could be very, very sure that once we started construction, everything would be correct in the first [run],” he said.
To Dr Krug, the “art of the possible” was that people no longer needed to test things through trial and error in the real world, “which is tremendously expensive.” Instead, companies could do everything virtually, he stated, adding that one of his most profound experiences was walking through the factory that had not been physically built.
Continuing, he stated,
When I was at the construction site and see [everything], I told people that, ‘Hey, this pipe needs to go one metre to the left,’ because I became aware of the details of the site, the building, and how it should appear.”
He added: “You can really avoid mistakes in the early phases as they don’t cost anything to make in the virtual world.”
Digital Twin Challenges
Regarding the challenges companies faced in the implementation of emerging technologies, Terwilliger told the audience that, despite technologists communicating the capabilities of such solutions, small and medium business owners wondered “how to make them actionable.”
“How do we approach this and break it down into steps? We don’t want to just convert to a new technologies that simply ‘promises’ to be amazing,” he said, citing an example from a discussion with a small manufacturing company experiencing massive growth over the last seven years.
He recalled the small business had approached Dassault and wanted to learn more about the technology to use at its on-site workstations, which involved “cutting up lengths of [40-50 feet long] I-beams coming off the truck.”
Peter Terwilliger, Director, Technical Sales, Dassault Systèmes
Moving the beams into the workstation caused major issues like disruptions due to their size. To resolve the matter, Dassault leveraged their digital twin and cloud solutions to optimise the business, without large IT infrastructure and other requirements to support the business.
Peter Terwilliger, Director, Technical Sales, Dassault Systèmes
He concluded: “The point is that they found something that optimised their manufacturing floor, which was their biggest challenge. Don’t think about it as a ‘great big giant pill of technology’ that you have to swallow.”
Small Steps, Greater Rewards
When asked about a specific call to action for global industries leveraging digital twins, Dr Krug explained that although opportunities can feel like being “a kid in a big toy store,” clients should not become overwhelmed.
He instead urged enterprises to concentrate on “where your greatest possibilities and biggest pain points are, focus on them, and select the right technologies to get started.”
He noted,
“They help to avoid mistakes, which you can correct [virtually], so just get started […] No incremental change is too small, and you want to find a solution that grows with you, breaks into baby steps, and that’s accessible by the cloud, everywhere, especially that dark place called the factory floor.”
He added that from the cloud, solutions should organise, visualise, and simulate feedback, allow its users to know that real-world data, and be collaborative and inclusive.
Expert users were already building “amazing” models with complex software, but consumers also needed to use the data to source the right materials, convert it via the programme, and learn project schedules.
“Ultimately, you want to figure out how to manufacture them on the factory floor, include people like me, who use the tool on-screen to markup designs,” he concluded.
The VRARA Best in XR, Digital Twins, and AI event took place on 24 July and showcased some of the biggest brands in digital solutions.
Hosted by the VRARA’s Kris Kolo, the event saw companies like Lenovo, Siemens, Unity, Merck, ShapesXR, Oberon Technologies, Amazon Web Services, Dassault Systèmes, Duke Energy, and many others share their success stories in XR.
The hosting organisation serves as a platform for many of the world’s biggest firms in virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality(VR/ AR/ MR/ XR), and operates from global chapters with a mission to support and boost the XR industry.
