Digital Twin leaders for urban cities

The nature of the virtual twin depends upon the objective with which it is built-whether it will just monitor and analyse the prototype; or allow the user to run simulations on it, understand issues and abnormalities, find out capable solutions based on advanced data analytics and help determine the capabilities of the product. To ensure that the digital twin architecture is accurate, sensors are fitted on vital functional areas of the physical counterpart. These sensors produce data from the object’s real time performance and map this data back to the IT software, which simulates the real-world original in a digital space. The sensors gather data continuously from the physical counterpart over its entire lifetime. With the help of this data, the digital twin evolves and updates itself if any change is encountered in the physical counterpart, thus enabling companies to understand flaws in the product, mend it when and where needed and extract the best performance out of it.

Digital twins are created by scanning their physcial counterparts in the real world and creating their digitized 3D version. All other real world data are gathered using various IoT systems and computational analytical models are created. These Models are then displayed through 3D representations to monitor and simulate the real - world conditions and visualize the outcomes on any device including smartphones, computers and AR/VR devices.

The digital twin deployment normally starts small, viz the performance of a single component within a product but expands and evolves over time. This however happens in two ways. Firstly, a small number of digital twins are made together to give a complete picture of the asset, process or system. Secondly, more sophisticated capabilities are added to the existing digital twin to study predict future performance of the physical counterpart.

A survey by Gartner showed that 13% of organizations that have implemented IoT, have already started using digital twins whereas 62% plan to use it within a year. This statistic stands testament to the fact that digital twins are fast becoming a nomenclature to drive innovation and performance across industries. Product engineers and technicians are upbeat about this burgeoning tech fad that brings the most advanced monitoring, analytical and predictive capabilities at their fingertips.

Companies who invest in digital twin technologies will witness a 30% increase in cycle times of critical processes, 10% increase in revenue and improve product quality by 25%. In the next five years, there will be millions of things that will be represented through digital twins. These replicas of the physical world will not only lead to better decision-making but also improve customer experience by understanding customer needs, enhance existing products, services and operations and drive innovation of new businesses. Digital twin technology is crucial to the development of Industrial 4.0 that will lead to complete automation of industries, foster data exchange, enhance manufacturing processes as well as de-risk product rollouts.