Insights

Gaining real-world benefits from UST digital twin solutions and expertise

Ramya Kannan

Understanding digital twin technologies

According to NetworkWorld, “Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical devices that data scientists and IT pros can use to run simulations before actual devices are built and deployed. Digital twins can also take real-time Internet of Things (IoT) data and apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics to optimize performance.”

This is an elegant definition of digital twin technologies because:

• It succinctly summarizes the concept—a virtual model of a physical object, device, or system
• It tells you what you can do with a digital twin—run simulations and study performance issues
• It helps you understand the benefit—analyzes data from digital twin simulations to optimize the performance of the physical asset

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IoT sensors in digital twins

The NetworkWorld definition mentions IoT data. Let’s dig into that topic a bit. IoT sensors that collect data are everywhere these days—on kitchen appliances, in automobiles, in our phones and clothing, and of course, on every type of industrial equipment imaginable. A recent report by IoT-analytics.com estimated that there were 14.3 billion active IoT endpoints in 2022, and the number of sensor endpoints is expected to grow by 16% to 16.7 billion in 2023. Many of those additional sensors are sure to be part of business-related use cases.

If you’re wondering why IoT sensors are important to a discussion about digital twins, it’s because the sensors and the data they generate—especially on industrial equipment—make digital twins so powerful. Once you’ve harnessed the sensor data, you can run sophisticated analytics to gain insights about your digital twin simulations to optimize your real-world system or asset.

IoT sensors can monitor just about everything, from temperature, pressure, and vibrations to water and air quality, smoke, and humidity levels, as well as images and motion. Combining this sensor data with vision AI and other advanced data collection and analysis techniques can unearth granular insights. These could include time series data for spatiotemporal analysis, parametric characterization, and near-real-time trend analysis to drive asset optimizations and process improvements.

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The connectedness of digital twins

There is an inherent connectedness between physical assets and their digital twin counterparts, thanks to the bidirectional data flow between the two entities. This two-way data connectivity is the pay-off that makes digital twins so beneficial. You can use the insights you’ve gained from the virtual system simulations to apply corrective actions in the real-world system to automatically:

• Optimize performance
• Reduce resource utilization and rework
• Drive out waste
• Pinpoint bottlenecks in human productivity and automated output
• Identify and prevent issues that could cause breakdowns in the physical system.

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UST’s digital twin platform

UST technology experts created the Intelligent Data Engineering and Computing (iDEC) platform to help our clients in manufacturing and other industries, like oil and gas, transportation, logistics, and utilities, effectively design, implement, and gain value from connected digital twins—in just eight to 12 weeks. Our platform is the foundation of our connected services strategy.

From a technical standpoint, our iDEC platform uses software-defined edge technology to deploy and manage large-scale digital twin implementations with low-touch provisioning and low runtime field interventions. It features hyper-convergence architecture, which is compatible with 5G-MEC architecture to enable distributed solutions. Apache Spark^TM and Apache Flink® big data processing frameworks enable the platform to process live data streams using machine learning and mathematical models with ultra-low latency. The digital twin platform can manage high-density endpoints for data ingestion and reliably scale with low latency to effectively manage delay-sensitive use cases.

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UST connected digital twin solutions

To help clients jump-start their digital twin initiatives, we’ve created—and already implemented with many global organizations—these solutions:

Connected vehicle digital twin solution: UST’s connected vehicle solution helps automotive OEMs and fleet operators monitor the health of fleet vehicles with diagnostics, vehicle health scores, driver scoring algorithms, and other driver data for usage-based insurance, customer insights, personalizations, and over-the-air software updates. This digital twin solution is designed to provide business leaders, IT teams, product designers, and service center teams with an aggregated view of fleet and driver data using real-time analytics to improve on-road performance and service center operations. The solution also offers EV-specific features to monitor and manage battery health, emission controls, recycling commitments, data monetization, and resale value calculations.

Connected workforce digital twin solution: UST’s connected worker solution enables companies to create a digital twin of their workforce to improve worker safety. With detailed analytics and process reviews, the solution offers real-time monitoring and tracking of personnel to identify and reduce unsafe behaviors and near-miss accidents to increase supervision fidelity. Our consultants have deployed this out-of-the-box solution in a single day and scaled it to thousands of workers across multiple sites. A gamification component drives user adoption.

Connected asset and infrastructure digital twin solution: Designed to facilitate industry 4.0 transformation across the manufacturing enterprise, UST’s connected assets solution monitors and tracks assets and systems in real time. It allows companies to:

• Improve resource utilization
• Manage maintenance and dynamic work scheduling
• Identify critical resources
• Streamline workflows
• Gain insights about energy utilization
• Reduce carbon footprints
• Enhance situational awareness.

Connected industrial temperature-tracking digital twin solution: This solution is an automated temperature monitoring solution for refrigeration units that sends alerts if temperatures are out of desirable ranges. The solution can help companies in the food and pharmaceutical industries and other businesses that produce or store temperature-sensitive products improve safety and quality, proactively manage equipment maintenance, reduce human resource labor requirements and costs, simplify reporting, decrease insurance liability, and improve regulatory compliance. The solution helped a UST client reduce labor costs by 19%—$24 million—annually.

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Digital twins: an emerging virtual technology with real-world benefits

McKinsey has called digital twin technologies “the foundation of the enterprise metaverse.” I couldn’t agree more. As companies implement these technologies in some of the more obvious scenarios within their companies, like supply chain, logistics, and production, business leaders will quickly see the benefits—and strategic power—of digital twins to fine-tune processes, drive out waste, and prevent issues much more efficiently than trial and error in the real world. I believe it will only be a matter of time before companies deploy virtual replicas of assets, systems, and processes across their enterprises in use cases we haven’t envisioned yet, creating the enterprise metaverse as McKinsey suggests.

If your organization is ready to embark on a digital twin initiative, UST experts are here to help you design and implement a connected solution in as little as eight to 12 weeks. To learn more, visit ust.com.