Engineering your Future Manufacturing – Possibilities of a Digital Twin

Expand the possibilities of your business when you transport your people, products and processes into the digital world.

From digital transformation to digital thread and digital twin to digital engineering – the consensus is that ‘digital’ is the next industry buzzword. But, is it just a buzzword or is it something more?

Today, industry is challenged to produce high quality products, quickly and safely, while keeping prices low. Smart manufacturing, made possible by digital technologies, is revolutionizing the way manufacturers operate by providing accessibility to relevant, real time information. Information-enabled manufacturing allows you to combat your biggest challenges.

Why the need for digital technologies?

The benefits of digital transformation run far and wide across the workplace. These include improving compliance and data integrity, bettering product quality and customer experience, and increasing productivity. It also helps reduce costs of goods sold and improves supply chain integrity.

You have probably heard about concepts like digital twin and digital thread but what do they mean? A digital twin is a digital replica of an asset — like a product, machine or plant. This replica is “living,” which means it changes as the asset is developed, operated and maintained. It can also be viewed on a screen or in an immersive 3D environment to improve processes like design, training and maintenance.

A digital thread refers to the digital trail of data created by a digital twin across an asset’s lifecycle. This data can be turned into easy-to-understand insights to inform people how the asset is performing or will perform. The good news is that digital engineering is not an all or nothing strategy. A good first step is to review your business and determine where you can do things smarter, faster or better using a digital approach.

Creating digital solutions

There are exciting new ways that digital engineering can help improve a number of different areas of your business. Specifically, these can be grouped into five key areas: design and prototyping, commissioning, operator training, production and maintenance.

Design and prototyping
Virtual design and prototyping can help you get machines to market faster, reduce risk in your designs, and create higher-caliber, more customized machines. It provides the ability for you to watch your machine run and see how it interacts with people or with other machines.

Bring your digital twin model into a VR environment to watch it perform in front of you as if you were with it on the plant floor. This can help you spot glaring problems or minor issues that you might otherwise miss. If you need to make changes, you can make them in your digital design with just a few clicks rather than buying parts and spending days of labor to build a new prototype.

Commissioning
Waiting until you bring a machine on-site to perform controls testing is a recipe for disaster.
Virtual commissioning can help avoid any issues. By creating a dynamic digital twin of both your machine design and the real operational logic of the control system, you can uncover issues earlier in the design phase — long before you bolt your machine into the floor of a customer’s plant. You can exhaustively verify and demonstrate the operation of your machine and the controller, before any resources are committed to them.

Training
Now, with virtual training, you can use a digital twin to train workers before a machine arrives. By either sliding on a VR headset or working from a screen, workers can build skills and competency in a safe and immersive virtual environment.

Operations
The value of digital engineering doesn’t stop after machines are commissioned and operators are trained. Once production starts, digital twins can mimic processes, machines and controls to help plant personnel learn about operations and experiment with changes. An ever-growing digital thread of information can reveal insights into how production can be improved.

In fact, a global manufacturer implemented a digital thread alongside its MES (Manufacturing Execution System) and saw a 50% lead time reduction to customers, a 50% reduction in defective parts and a 4% improvement in productivity.

Maintenance
Maintenance teams can fight downtime like never before using digital simulations and real-time (or even predictive) insights. Data flowing through a digital thread can help technicians detect problems as they happen, to prevent or minimize downtime. This includes health and diagnostic data from control system devices that can notify technicians when maintenance is needed. But it also includes network data, for example, from switch-level alarms, which today is as critical to uptime.

In an ideal world, maintenance teams would never need to respond to downtime events because they could predict them. This is increasingly possible thanks to the use of predictive analytics. These analytics use machine learning and artificial intelligence to learn your operations, identify machine issues early and alert technicians of those issues. Technicians can then schedule maintenance during a planned downtime.

Digital twins can help you improve MTTR in a couple key ways. First, virtual training allows technicians to prepare for downtime problems in advance rather than troubleshooting them the first time they happen. And when problems do happen, technicians can use AR technology to overlay digital diagnostics or work instructions on a physical machine to diagnose and fix problems faster.

Stages of digital transformation

Digitalization is continuing to provide significant benefits to industry. In its recent report, The Internet of Things: Mapping Value Beyond the Hype, McKinsey sees IoT having a ‘total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025.

This is highly prevalent in industry, where digital transformation has moved beyond ‘consideration’ to now experiencing significant business outcomes. In fact, 72% of manufacturing companies plan to significantly increase investment into digitalization efforts in 2020. These manufacturers’ combined financial commitment is expected to reach $907 billion in 2020, according to PWC.

Rockwell Automation recently conducted global primary research to explore the roles, perceptions and decision-making involvement of executives involved in digital transformation/IIoT decisions across seven key industries globally: oil and gas, chemicals, metals and mining, life sciences, food and beverage, household and personal care, and automotive.

In the Rockwell Digital Transformation 2020 Report, it became clear that companies have moved beyond the consideration phase for digital transformation initiatives. In fact, 2019 saw a 400 percent growth in digital transformation projects moving post-implementation. Of companies interviewed, 50% are already in rollout or full-scale production, or applying continuous process improvement to initial digital initiatives (Figure 1).

Value of end-to-end solutions

This research revealed that many enterprises lacked the technology expertise necessary for success. Of the enterprises surveyed, less than one-third rated themselves as knowledgeable in technologies critical to their success. Specifically, only 37% of respondents felt they “knew a lot about” AI, while just 33% were knowledgeable about IIoT. It was 29% for augmented and virtual reality, 31% for cloud analytics, and 27% for robotics.

One thing they all agreed on: there is a need to effectively deploy and maintain comprehensive, unified digital transformation initiatives. Given the complexity of IIoT systems, they look to end-to-end partners that can support wide-scale deployments. The solution needs to address manufacturing execution systems as well as analytics, and act as a complete Industrial IoT platform.

Enabling technologies

In recent times, digital transformation technologies have advanced significantly – making now more than ever the best time to assess how these enabling technologies can help you create a smarter and safer workforce.

Augmented reality can help solve complex plant-floor problems and improve workforce productivity and efficiency. Harpak-ULMA, an industry leader in packaging design solutions recently implemented a digital transformation solution with FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite, powered by PTC and its Vuforia augmented reality platform. This new solution expanded the company’s IoT connectivity.  With the use of machine learning and predictive analytics, Harpak-ULMA was able to reshape maintenance business models and customer cost structures.

Another common challenge facing the manufacturing industry today is that traditional methods of machine and production line design, commissioning and startup can be costly and impede speed to market. As such, many Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers are turning to emulation as a tool to research, test and validate their process in a virtual space. CPG companies are gaining significant launch-time advantages with emulation technology. Advances in visualization, design software and training are making it easier than ever to employ.

Emulate 3D by Rockwell Automation, develops dynamic digital twin software for virtual commissioning, throughput simulation, and industrial demonstration. Using a 3D model to deliver realistic feedback in place of the real automated system, provides the opportunity to leverage virtual simulation and commissioning to bring your machine and production lines to life while reducing the costs and risks involved.

Digital technologies for OEMs

The demand for smarter, IoT-enabled machines is rapidly intensifying. There is a strong market need for OEMs to reinvent their operations with digital transformation technologies to meet this demand.

Integrating smart machines at the end-user site quickly and cost-effectively is a key challenge for many OEMs. Thankfully, innovative control system design tools can help. At the core of this new functionality are system design instructions that enable you to configure ‘smart objects’ that become part of the tag structure. Smart objects identify what data to collect – and how and when that data is collected. This new approach to smart machine control system design streamlines one of the most arduous parts of the integration process, before your machine reaches the plant floor.

The latest visualization technologies including augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality, can help OEMs by enhancing worker capabilities and creating safer, more productive processes. Visualization technologies provide the capability for equipment-manufacturer intelligence to be streamed directly to the engineer’s device. Together, they examine the machine, gather additional information, identify the underlying cause of the problem and recommend a repair solution in minutes, not days.

Overcoming the road blocks

The benefits of digital transformation for all industries are undeniable but it is important to note that most digital initiatives fail before they are fully implemented. A recent Gartner study estimated that 85% of big data projects fail across all market segments.

There are a number of risks to be aware of when navigating a new digital transformation initiative including:

Lack of understanding of digitalization
As important as defining what a digital transformation means to a company, is defining what it does not mean. Companies must clearly define what digital transformation means to their business and what they would like to achieve. Digital transformation is a composition of technology, processes, and people – and it must be positioned as an enabler of business transformation.

Digital transformation as a standalone strategy
A recent MIT Sloan study showed that just 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy can list three of their company’s strategic priorities. When digital transformation is not incorporated into overall business strategy, the project does not receive the level of prioritization and funding to find long-term success.

Technology-thinking instead of problem-thinking
As digital transformation initiatives progress, they often find additional technological solutions attached to them at the behest of executive sponsors or members or the project team but it is important to remember that when it comes to technology – more does not necessarily mean better.

Workforce skills challenge
The use of digital tools is often considered a technical endeavor, however, adopting and using digital solutions required more than just technical skills. Companies must focus hiring initiatives on finding employees who possess digital literacy and curiosity, not rule out candidates that lack technical expertise.

Custom and in-house applications
Although a custom software solution may seem perfect initially, it is important to remember that custom applications often cannot be updated or altered by anyone other than the person who built them. However, new configuration-based products enable companies to develop and deploy experiences like augmented reality and supply chain simulation without spending an excessive amount of time and resources engineering a custom solution.

Lack of scalability plan
A recent study by New Everest Group showed that 78% of enterprises today fail to scale their digital initiative. Digital transformation often happens in silos where companies fail to plan for scalability across the organization. Scalable analytics allow the development of analytics experiences in unit operations, but with the ability to multiply to different areas of the company.

No clear business case or return of investment
The value of digital transformation is so obvious that projects are sometimes pushed forward without taking the time to define each project initiative and note the value and risk associated with it. To avoid losing sight of this, it is important to prioritize which project components to start, continue or stop so the best initiatives can be selected, the next best set to be monitored as strategic and the set with the weakest business case to be scrapped.

Wrong suppliers and partnerships
Today, we are surrounded with technology solutions from a myriad of vendors. Often, these vendors are so focussed on selling their solutions, they bypass confirming the solution is meeting a legitimate business need for the buyer. Companies must seek suppliers who understand the latest enabling digital technologies and are experienced at tying these technologies back to business needs.

Challenges in integrating legacy infrastructure
A report by the Manufacturing Performance Institute showed that only 50% of all manufacturers have business systems that adequately manage their business processes. Thankfully, new IoT platforms can facilitate the integration of legacy systems, without requiring a complete overhaul.

Entering the digital world

Digital engineering is the foundation of the future. It provides the technologies required for industry to address their greatest challenges. When undertaking a digital transformation, it is important to define a strategy and outline a clear roadmap.

It is important to approach digital transformation as a journey, not a destination to reach. With proper definition and planning, an upgrade of worker skills, and a company-wide integration of digital initiatives – digital transformation can deliver incredible results.