Three types of digital twins

‘’The potential applications for a digital twin depend on what stage of the product lifecycle it models. Generally speaking, there are three types of digital twins: Product, Production, and Performance, which are explained below. The combination and integration of the three digital twins as they evolve together is known as the digital thread. The term "thread" is used because it is woven into, and brings together data from, all stages of the product and production lifecycles.’’ (Siemens, 2023)

Product Digital Twins: 

Using digital twins for efficient design of new products and improving the current products.

Digital twins can be used for various purposes, for example, they can be used to virtually validate the performance of products. During this validation, the products are still acting in the physical world. The ‘’digital product’’ provides a connection between the physical and virtual world and lets whoever uses it analyze how their product performs under various conditions, without having to implement them all in the physical world. After testing in the virtual world, the adjustments can slowly be implemented in the physical world. When companies are using complex systems and materials, the digital twin will help them navigate that complexity and assist the companies in making the best possible decisions. 

  • The digital twin (product) will help companies with the following:
  • Eliminating the need for multiple prototypes
  • Reducing the total development time
  • Improving the quality of the finished goods
  • Allows quicker response to customer feedback

Production Digital Twins

Using digital twins in manufacturing & production planning

When trying to increase the performance of the production process, for a company it's crucial to keep the production going as steady as possible. Stopping production leads to a decrease in finished produced products and the costs to stop and restart production are relatively high. That’s where the production digital twin can come in handy. This technology can help to validate how well a manufacturing process will perform, with the recently made improvements. Do the changes increase the performance of the manufacturing process, or will they lead to more downtime, a longer throughput time, or a decrease in the quality of the product? With a digital twin, the process can be simulated, tested, and analyzed before implementing the changes in the process. With such a technology, the improvement of manufacturing processes can be increased, without shutting down production. An example of a case, where the production digital twin can come in handy:

Company x wants to research the influence of increasing the speed of the assembly line by 10%. If the company works don't change anything else, how does this influence the rest of the production? Will there be a bottleneck? What will happen if we put an extra operator next to the assembly line? All these possibilities can be simulated in the production digital twin.

Performance Digital Twins

Performance can be monitored by using digital twins to capture, analyze and act on operational data.

With factories nowadays improving digitally, more data is available and required. This also applies to the development of products. All these products and factories generate much more data than before. All of this data can be used to determine the utilization and effectiveness of the companies. The digital twin (performance) captures data from the factories and the products and lets companies make the desired analysis to provide the needed information to make the right decisions. Using digital twins (performance), companies can:

  • Generate new business opportunities
  • Acquire insight for the improvement of the virtual models
  • Capture, aggregate, and analyze operational data
  • Improving the efficiency of the production systems
  • Improving the products

Sources:

https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/our-story/glossary/digital-twin/24465

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