Digital twin technology creates a digital replica of a physical object or system that can be used to gather data, understand past and current behavior, and predict future performance. The digital twin is made possible by sensors that collect data from physical assets and IoT technology. The document discusses the history and development of digital twin technology, how it is used across various industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and aerospace to optimize operations and reduce costs, and the future potential of digital twins including using them to make decisions and interact after death.

1. DIGITAL TWIN TECHNOLOGY
Dr Mithileysh Sathiyanarayanan
MIT Square, London

2. Webinar
Agenda
Digital twin definition
The driving technology behind
Digital twin
Why digital twin?
How to use digital twin?
7 Amazing examples of digital
twin technology

3. What is Digital Twin?
• As an exact digital replica of something in the physical world, digital
twins are made possible thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that
gather data from the physical world and send it to machines to
reconstruct. While the concept of a digital twin has been around since
2002 when Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan first used
the terminology, it was IoT technology that made it affordable and
accessible to many more businesses. By creating a digital twin, insights
about how to improve operations, increase efficiency or discover an
issue are all possible before it happens to whatever it’s duplicating in
the real world. The lessons learned from the digital twin can then be
applied to the original system with much less risk and a lot more
return on investment.
• When you take a minute to consider all the ways this could be
useful for businesses, it’s easy to see how the potential for digital
twin technology is just about limitless. That’s likely why digital twin
technology was included on Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology
Trends for 2017 and 2018. Gartner predicted there would be 21
billion connected sensors by 2020, making digital twins possible for
billions of things.

4. Historical background
• NASA initial pioneered the idea of digital twin
• The concept formulated in University of Michigan
2003 By Dr. Michael Grieves Specialist in Life cycle
management & JohnVickers of Nasa
• The adoption of this model in industries till 2014
• Introducing cognitive & AI starting form 2015 by
IBM, Microsoft and industry leaders
• 2017 and going on introduce immersive digital twin
experience with Augmented reality

5. NASA
research
In the early days of space
exploration. NASA grappled with
the challenge of designing things
that travel so far away, beyond
the ability to immediately see,
monitor or modify.
NASA's innovation was a Digital
Twin of the physical system, a
complete digital model that can
be used to operate, simulate and
analyze an underlying system
governed by physics.

6. Information Mirroring Model
• Physical products (Real space)
• Virtual products(Virtual Space)
• The connection
• Data
• Information

8. Digital Twin
At Work
• Digital twin eliminates guesswork
from determining the best course of
action to service critical physical
assets, from engines to power
turbines. Moving forward, easy
access to this unique combination
of deep knowledge and intelligence
about your assets paves the road to
optimization and business
transformation.

9. DEVICE SHADOW

10. ‘Digital
twins’
could make
decisions for us
within 5 years
• WITHIN five years we could
have a “digital twin”
capable of making
decisions for you and even
interacting with loved
ones after we die
• We’re already off to a
good start with software
like Apple’s Siri,
Microsoft’s Cortana and
“Eugene Goostman”

11. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
• The way to track data or transactions, the way we collaborate
and communicate, have all been changed and advanced
through digital technology.
• Profound changes in our societies

12. IoT space
• The idea of a Digital Twin is now being developed in the IoT
space, and it is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for
digitalizing the physical world.
• It is the bridge between the physical and the digital
world.
• A technology that is dynamic, learning and also
interactive.

13. What are Digital Twins exactly?
• Fundamentally, it is the combination of data and intelligence
that represent the structure, context and behavior of a
physical system of any type, offering an interface that allows
one to understand past and present operation, and make
predictions about the future.
• These are very powerful digital objects that can be used
to optimize the physical world, significantly improving
operational performance and business processes.

14. The
Digital
Twin
• A complex system produces massive
amounts of data. Connect a group of
systems together through the
internet, and the data increases
exponentially. All of the data coming
off of these devices is descriptive.
That is, the data tells you what
happened and when it happened.
Data analytics extends the data to be
predictive and tell you when
something will happen
• — a failure, for instance. But data
analytics doesn’t tell you how to
improve the product to avoid the
failure. However, a digital twin — a
3-D digital model of a physical
system — can do this!

16. Airframe Digital Twin
The Digital Twin– a concept
which combines as-built vehicle
components, as-experienced
loads and environments, and
other vehicle- specific
characteristics to enable
ultrahigh fidelity modeling of
aircraft and spacecraft or their
components throughout their
service lives.

18. Can be
used for
Training
Also, the same platform can then be leveraged to
mitigate the evergreen challenge of sales
training, after-sales support and technician
training once the products are in the market.
A Digital Twin is a working model, of the products
and processes being developed. Using a
combination of simulation, cloud computing,
animation and other technologies, product
engineers and research and development (R&D)
scientists can now visualize exactly how their
new products would come to life without
resorting to clay models, prototypes and the like.

19. Digital Twins can potentially slice away as much as
50% of product development time and costs.
Salesforce and channel partner productivity can be
dramatically increased, by as much as 25-33%,
through the effective deployment of the platform
for training and support purposes.

20. Industrial Internet of Things

21. EMERGENCE OF THE DATA
ECONOMY
A vast array of industrial machines — jet
engines, power generators, pipelines,
locomotives — increasingly are becoming
connected through the Internet.
With the amount of data generated by
machine sensors rising exponentially,
coupled with ever- more powerful Big
Data analytics, the Industrial Internet has
reached a critical tipping point. It requires
industrial companies to adopt a digital
mindset that embraces what the Industrial
Internet can offer in new growth
opportunities.

22. Digital Twin for MRO operations
• Technicians and operators can be presented with detailed MRO
procedure steps, track time needed to complete the
procedure, resolve service tickets with feedback from their side
and also submit problems and remarks found during the
device inspection.

23. USED
FOR MONITORING, DIAGNOSTICS AND
PROGNOSTICS
• Sensory data is sufficient for building digital twins
• These models help to improve the outcome of prognostics by
using and archiving historical information of physical assets and
perform comparison between fleet of geographically
distributed machines
• Finding the root cause of issues and
improve productivity.
• Its ability to deliver early warnings, predictions, and
optimization is fairly universal.

24. Digital Twin At Work
• The need to service jet engines can be determined in advance,
and furthermore helps plan ways to extend the use of the
asset. After a plane spends much of its operational life in the
dry, sandy air of the Middle East, this technology could suggest
redeploying the plane in a different clime such as the Pacific
Northwest, offering cooler, moist air to reduce risk of engine
failure. Another option might be to reroute the plane closer to
maintenance facilities that can regularly provide service.

25. LIFE CYCLE COSTING
The idea behind the digital twin is to go
further than working with models; the
costs of maintenance versus replacing an
entire asset are also considered.
If a company orders jet engines, the
revenue projections become part of the
digital twin, along with the designs for the
engines, specific materials used in
construction, and information on the
factory where they were built. When the
engine starts up, and when it is serviced,
sensors feed that data into the twin.

26. THE
FUTURE OF
DIGITAL
TWIN
• What the digital twin produces,
when bundling data with
intelligence, is a view of the each
asset’s history and its potential
future performance. This
continuum of information leads to
early warnings, predictions, ideas
for optimization, and most
importantly a plan of action to keep
assets in servicelonger.
• It will be about sending
commands to machines
in response to those
forecasts.

27. Reduced asset
downtime and
maintenance costs,
Improved plant and
factory efficiency,
Reduced cycle times,
and increased
market agility
Measurable
Business
Outcomes

29. Digital Twins Revolutionize
Strategic Planning in Healthcare
• By enabling massively-collaborative, data- driven and
scenario-based decision making.
• Without a digital twin, leaders rely on tribal knowledge
and basic analysis to plan new facilities and next year’s
budget for existing
• facilities. This is normal but it leaves much to be desired. With a
digital twin, leaders virtually test changes to bed mix, bed
algorithm, task assignment, floorplan, equipment, ALOS,
model of care, staffing etc.

31. DIGITAL TWIN OF THE HUMAN
• Can be built organ by organ.
• If successful, it can enable comprehensive digital twin tracking of
an individual from birth to death. This will pave the way for a
highly personalized diagnostics model capable of predicting
upcoming illnesses, recommending life style or dietary changes,
and even calculating the age of death. This, in turn, can help find
solutions to extend life through a healthier lifestyle or early
intervention treatments.

32. Tools

33. Digital Wind Farm
• THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF WIND ENERGY
• Optimizes turbine performance and equipment life through the use of
Predix*, a predictive analytics software platform.
• Predix provides a digital infrastructure for the wind farm, enabling us to
collect, visualize and analyze unit & site level data. Through the constant
collection of real time data— weather, component messages, service
reports, performance of similar models in GE’s fleets—a predictive
model is built and the data collected is turned into actionable insights.
This model can perform advanced planning, such as forecasting a ‘plan
of the day’ for turbine operation, determining a highly efficient strategy
to execute planned maintenance activities, and providing warnings
about upcoming unplanned maintenance events, all of which ultimately
generates more output and revenue for the customer.

34. 7 Amazing Examples of Digital Twin
Technology
• Companies use digital twin technology for many reasons including to
improve ongoing operations, train employees and to test new
products or procedures before launching them to the real world where
it becomes more expensive and complicated to fix any issues.
• Oftentimes artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to
analyze the model of operations represented by the digital twin no
matter where the real facility is located—even if the equipment is in
space. NASA used pairing technology, the precursor to digital twin
technology, from the earliest days of space exploration to solve the
issue of operating,
• maintaining and repairing systems when you aren’t near them
physically. This was precisely how engineers and astronauts on
Earth determined how to rescue the Apollo 13 mission.
• Today, digital twins are used at NASA to explore next-generation
vehicles and aircraft.

35. 7 Amazing Examples of Digital Twin
Technology
• Digital twin technology can help personnel get comfortable with Internet of Things
implementation and automation because they have the opportunity to simulate
the application prior to it going live. The lessons learned and opportunities
uncovered through a digital twin can then be applied to the physical
environment.
• Since digital twins can give a real-time view of what’s happening with equipment
or other physical assets, they have been very helpful in manufacturing to reduce
maintenance issues and ensure optimal production output. Chevron expects to
save millions of dollars in maintenance costs from the digital twin technology they
will have deployed on equipment by 2024 in oil fields and refineries.
• Similar to the benefits in manufacturing, digital twins can revolutionize healthcare
operations as well as patient care. A digital twin of a patient or organs allows
surgeons and health professionals to practice procedures in a simulated
environment rather than on a real patient. Sensors the size of bandages can
monitor patients and produce digital models that can be monitored by AI and
used to improve care.

36. 7 Amazing Examples of Digital Twin
Technology
• At the Spring Festival Gala aired on China Central Television, the four
human hosts were joined by an AI copy of themselves—their very own
digital twin created by ObEN. They are more than computer-generated
avatars because they used machine learning, natural language
processing, and computer vision to build virtual copies of the hosts.
Future applications for this technology include plans to build AI-powered
teachers, nurses, and doctors.
• Digital twin technology has even been deployed to refine Formula 1
car racing. In a sport where every second counts, a simulation can
help the driver and the car team know what adjustments can improve
performance.
• There is even a digital twin of Singapore! Imagine all the variables that go
into the management of a city. Digital twin technology helps city planners
understand and improve the efficiency of energy consumption as well as
many applications that can improve life for its citizens.

37. 7 Amazing Examples of Digital Twin
Technology
• Where else do you think a virtual replication of a physical
object would come in handy? From wind farms to
modernizing farming and testing smartphones to improving
services, there is really no limit to how digital twins
technology can positively impact our world.

38. References
• Dr. Michael Grieves
• https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=Rs5qczNT6zo
• http://innovate.fit.edu/plm/docu
ments/doc_mgr/912/1411.0_Di
gital_Twin_Whit
e_Paper_Dr_Grieves.pdf
• IBM resources
• https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=0-GCYIAKbiI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=RaOejcczPas&t=2s
• https://www.ibm.com/blogs/
bluemix/2017/06/smartfacto
rykl-industrie-40-
reference-architecture-
example/
• Microsoft resources
• https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=5lgOcWPQP1A