Have you got one? A lot of ports, terminals and other companies active in the supply chain have.
In fact, there is a big surge in interest in deploying digital twin technology as evidenced by the articles ’Digital twins the future’ and ’The rise of digital twins’.
. The latter article particularly highlights the range of applications for digital twin technology in the ports sector and the ensuing benefits.
The fundamental strength of the digital twin, and what makes it so exciting to deploy, is that it effectively bridges the divide between model and reality. Driven by developments with the internet of things (ioT), big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital reality technologies, the recent arrival of digital twins signals a defining moment where the physical and digital worlds can be managed as one, and we can interact with the digital counterpart of physical things much like we would the things themselves.
Bottom line, what doers this deliver? In a nutshell, better decision making which in turn is expected to drive significant changes in the operation of supply chains and logistics processes. Digital twins bring deeper insight into the planning, operation and optimisation of the individual components of supply chains – ports and terminals for example – right through to entire global networks.
Exactly how can they work and deliver real benefits. Six main areas of application are identified:
Twins for system prediction: A digital twin geared towards predicting complex systems.
Twins for system simulation: A digital twin that can simulate complex system behavior.
Twins for asset interoperability: A digital twin to achieve common data formats and streamlined data extraction in complex systems.
Twins for maintenance: A digital twin that will assist with maintenance related cases.
Twins for system visualisation: A digital twin for visualising a complex system (e.g. in 3D)
Twins for product simulation: A digital twin simulating the behaviour of future products/systems, mostly at the design phase.
There is no stopping the digital twin bandwagon now – as noted above there is a major uplift of interest in deploying this technology. The days are now long gone when complexity and cost restrained the broad-based adoption of digital twins. The growing number of technology providers bears witness to this and significantly industry analysts expect the digital twin market to grow at a rate of more than 38 per cent over the next few years, accounting for more than USD26 billion by 2025. If you haven’t explored the digital twin dimension yet it is clearly very worthwhile doing so.
