5 WAYS TO GET VALUE FROM YOUR
DYNAMIC DIGITAL TWINS
By Ian McGregor, Business Development Manager, Emulate 3D
Few companies will have presented to
shareholders over the last few years
without making statements about how
they are implementing a Digital Thread
throughout the company, or at least
referencing the Industrial Internet of
Things (IIoT) and how it will make them
more competitive. While the conver-
gence of many technologies has made it
easier and cheaper to collect and process
data from industrial systems, it is also
true that this has resulted in a profusion
of data-driven solutions competing for
your attention and claiming to bring ad-
vantages. Your challenge is to determine
which of these brings real value to your
company, and how you can successfully
implement them.
Standing front and center among the
tools at your disposal to help with this
evaluation is industrial simulation, a
methodology which has withstood the
test of time over at least the last half
century and which continues to prove
its worth across a wide range of applica-
tions. Simulation models are Dynamic
Digital Twins built to help understand,
test, and develop the behaviour of the
real systems they represent. Once cali-
brated and validated, they enable users
to make informed decisions to improve
their performance, reduce costs, or
satisfy other objectives. A more recent
addition to the digital toolset is virtu-
al commissioning, which enables the
offline verification of control systems
under various operating conditions. By
connecting a reliable model of a system
to its actual control system and intro-
ducing loads into the model in a realistic
and repeatable way, users create a Dy-
namic Digital Twin designed to ensure
the control system works as planned on
start-up, through ramp to full operation.
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The Satellite Review
The successful application of these
technologies creates value for companies
who adopt them under a range of differ-
ent situations.
1. Demonstrate proposed solu-
tions clearly. Whether you are in com-
petition with other solution providers
competing for business, or you are part
of a team tasked with creating automa-
tion solutions within your company,
being able to demonstrate complex op-
eration realistically ensures an efficient
approach. Even without precise opera-
tional data to drive it, a Dynamic Digital
Twin of the proposed solution enables
stakeholders to understand the system
and then ask the right questions to move
the project forward.
2. Reduce the risk associated with
your automation system choices.
A simulation model is the ultimate
impartial judge when it comes to decid-
ing between layout options, hardware
choices, and different control systems.
By creating repeatable data-driven mod-
els which incorporate various solutions,
you have a powerful means of taking
numerically-backed decisions. Given
an agreed output or product flow as a
starting point, dimensioning questions
can be answered by a parameterised sim-
ulation model. Implement and test the
business rules which determine the flow
within the system to ensure it behaves
as expected under a variety of operating
conditions.
3. Test the logical operation of the
control system offline. Don’t wait
until the real system is installed before
you start testing the control system –
build a Dynamic Digital Twin of the
system and connect it to the real control
system. Introduce product flows to drive
the operation of the model and ensure
the controls operate the way they were
designed to under all conditions. Devel-
op virtual FAT tests to reduce the time
spent onsite.
4. Carry out ongoing offline
controls testing. Onsite testing of an
automation system becomes problem-
atic once it is put into operation – any
intervention risks disrupting production
and damaging profitability. A Dynamic
Digital Twin of the system enables you
to carry out ongoing testing in parallel
to its real operation. By maintaining the
model you can test any proposed layout
modifications to the real system before
implementing them, as well as verifying
the required changes to the controls. Test
situations before they happen, and then
take preventive actions when necessary.
5. Train operators without caus-
ing disruption to production. Keep
your production system in operation
as much as possible by training on a
Dynamic Digital Twin. By building
models connected to the control system
and the operator HMI control screens,
you have an accurate and non-intrusive
training system. Train operators not only
in normal operation sequences but also
in emergency shut downs and recovery
situations, without danger to your oper-
ators, machines, or products. Training
systems can assist users with a prompted
learning experience which adapts to
their progress, and provides useful feed-
back to system design.
The value in Dynamic Digital Twins
centers on their ability to replicate the
response of the real system under a wide
range of operating conditions in a way
that is easy to understand for the project
stakeholders. While most of the value
resides in the initial design and develop-
ment of the automation system, there are
clear applications for the tools in opera-
tions, both for operator training and for
ongoing system modifications.
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