Enterprise Digital Twin: What kind of business needs one and for what purpose?

We are launching a new column — expert opinion of Usetech employees. And today we would like to share with you a comment from Vladimir Fedyanov, Director of Business Development at Usetech.

“In recent years, the term “Digital Twin” has become an integral part of conversations about modern technology and innovation, covering many industries. The concept is a virtual model of a physical object, system, or manufacturing process that allows you to monitor, analyze, and predict the behavior of its real-world counterpart in real time.

Digital Twin manufacturing is not just a buzzword, it is one of the pillars of the new industrial revolution. Despite its growing popularity, Digital Twin technology has yet to penetrate many sectors of the economy, its potential looks promising.

The trend towards the implementation of Digital Twins is particularly noticeable in key industries such as metals, mining, energy, and oil and gas. These sectors are characterized by a continuous production cycle, which makes the use of the technology particularly useful.

For example, in metallurgy, Digital Twin helps to optimize steelmaking and rolling processes, to simulate different scenarios when changing temperature or rolling speed parameters.

In the mining industry — to improve the management of mining operations and minimize risks.

In the energy industry, Digital Twins can be used to monitor the condition of equipment under different loads, which allows predicting possible breakdowns and carrying out preventive maintenance.

In the oil and gas industry, digital simulation technology allows specialists to optimize key processes such as drilling, production, and refining. For example, it is possible to simulate scenarios with different equipment operating modes to understand which one will result in the greatest economic benefit.

Digitalization is also transforming the construction industry, providing developers with opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce project timelines. At the forefront of these changes is building information modeling (BIM). Thanks to modeling, architects, engineers, and builders have access to a single, constantly updated database, which allows them to identify potential problems at an early stage.

In today’s realities, a fundamentally new approach to the digitalization of manufacturing is emerging — the creation of ecosystems. A key aspect is the integration of Digital Twins into a single system. For example, virtual models of plants in a factory can be combined into one Digital Twin, which will display not only their individual characteristics, but also the interactions between them. In this way it is possible to monitor the operating parameters of the entire site, identify bottlenecks and optimize the work along the entire production process chain.

Digital Twins are virtual models of physical objects, processes, or systems that allow companies to run detailed simulations of different scenarios. These models help not only in analyzing and optimizing current processes and planning, but also in predicting potential problems, which in turn allows identifying potential risks in advance and find the best ways to solve them. Using Digital Twins, enterprises can conduct a comprehensive risk analysis by modeling various threats and “what-if” scenarios. This allows to identify the most vulnerable areas in the production chain, critical modes of operation and equipment parameters, as well as to develop effective measures to prevent abnormal situations. In addition, Digital Twins significantly reduce the number of risk events, which is especially important for hazardous production facilities.