Digital Twin + Industrial Internet for Smart Manufacturing: A Case Study in the Steel Industry
Figure 1: Closed loops of optimization enabled by data, analytic models and applications
Therefore, the industrial internet is more
than just connecting to the industrial assets.
It is about building on that connectivity to
collect data and apply data analytics to gain
insights and transform these insights into
actions that are applied to the individual
machines, the operations of fleets of
machines and to the business processes—
ultimately to bring intelligence in the overall
end-to-end business processes to achieve
optimal business outcomes. It may not be an
over-simplification to say that the core
elements in the application of the industrial
internet are data, analytics and applications
that form closed feedback loops to enable
smart and optimal operations. Here,
applications refer to the software that
incorporates the business logics which
transform the insights from data analytics
into actions.
This data-driven closed-loop optimization
can in fact be implemented in multiple loops,
as shown in Figure 1. The control loop
optimizes the operation of individual
equipment with a response near real time in
the milliseconds to ensure the equipment is
operating—and doing so efficiently for
higher output at lower cost (e.g. in energy).
The operation loop optimizes the operation
of a fleet of equipment (e.g. across a
production line, or even across production
processes) with a response time ranging
from seconds to hours to seek balanced and
efficient operations. The business loop
optimizes business operations in a response
time ranging from hours to weeks to seek to
maximize value-creation by cross-domain
(e.g. equipment maintenance, process
management, energy management, quality
management, etc.), multi-factor (e.g. cost,
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November 2019