Digital twins: digitization of the industry

Not long ago, my colleague Miguel Mateo (Chief Sales Officer at MonoM) was invited by Telefónica Tech, at MWC21 (Mobile World Congress 2021) to give a talk on Predictive Technology and 5G and how it is revolutionizing the digitization of the industry. Sharing a coffee after his talk, we both agreed that the immediate Future of this new 5G+Predictive technology was the Digital Twins and their application to many sectors of the economy and industry. Although we both lamented how unknown they are, despite how much they can bring to industries.

WHAT IS A DIGITAL TWIN?

To put it simply, a digital twin has the ability to interpret the information captured in the physical world and display it to humans in graphical format, mainly providing two things.

If you have doubts about the term "physical world" let me tell you that I am referring to things like the engines of a factory assembly line or those of a lift bridge, the entire piping network of a warship, or the rotor of a wind turbine, to name a few examples.

Firstly, a digital twin provides, in addition to a digital image of the infrastructure and/or asset it represents, the ability to know, in real time, the status of the infrastructure, showing you in a simple and easy way the important and critical information of all assets, at the same time it can make decisions by activating internal processes, triggering alarms and other actions, based on the information collected thanks to machine learning algorithms.

DIGITAL TWIN, KEY TO DECISION MAKING AND SAVINGS

A second contribution is the ability to draw scenarios, so that the user can analyze them and make decisions based on them.

You can imagine the benefits to a factory operations manager of being able to build performance and failure forecasting scenarios for his assembly lines, can't you?

Or how much better the investment made every year in the maintenance of national infrastructures can be managed, if engineers can see in their digital twin the current state of roads, tunnels, bridges, railways, ports and predict when any of them may have problems, according to the scenarios being studied.

These examples are a sample. Now think of other sectors and industries that need to monitor the condition of their infrastructure or assets and maximize them to improve performance, productivity and competitiveness.

According to Research Dive, the estimated growth for the next 5 years for the implementation of digital twins is 41.5%.

OPERATION OF A DIGITAL TWIN

Be aware that there are a number of technologies that support digital twins and these are 5G technology, IIoT(Industrial Internet of Things) platforms and predictive technology.

A digital twin, first of all, monitors the assets and/or infrastructure for which a digital asset is needed, using sensors of different types (pressure, vibration, temperature, oil, noise, ... or others).

The sensors collect information in real timereal time and send it (using wireless or Edge Computing technology) to a Cloud IIoT platform. and send it (using wireless technology or Edge Computing technology ) to a Cloud IIoT platform. It is essential to have the best possible communications. That is why the role of 5G, since its existence, has become essential for the existence of digital twins and their benefits.

Once the information arrives to the IIoT platform, it is interpreted, analyzed and compared with other databases. For this it is necessary to have an IIoT platform with Big Data, and predictive machine learning algorithms based on the knowledge of Predictive Analysts and Data Sciences and that meet the user's needs.

Finally, the digital twins graphically represent the assets and link them to AI (Artificial Intelligence) processes for decision making and/or scenario generation.

DO I NEED A DIGITAL TWIN?

How can you decide whether or not a digital twin in your organization benefits you? Perhaps these questions will help you reflect and have an answer:

• Does creating scenarios of your business help you improve your strategies?
• Does predicting what and when you have to hold an asset help you invest better?
• Does having all the information related to your asset regardless of the source benefit you?
• How long do you think it will take your competitor to integrate this technology?
• Do I have another effective strategy to digitize my infrastructure?
• Are there experts who can help me?

Digital Twins are here and they have come to stay just like cell phones, the Internet, airplanes and computers.

ANTONIO RAMIREZ CAÑAS

Chief Marketing Officer at Grupo Álava