Top 10: Uses Of Digital Twins

Everyone from US cities to theme parks to global manufacturing operations are embracing digital twins. 

By simulating assets, products and environments, they have the capacity to transform designing, testing, safety and so much more.

Here, in no particular order, is an exploration of ten of their biggest benefits to manufacturing, focusing on a diversity of verticals and organisations. 

1. Cost estimation & budgeting

Company: TotalEnergies

2023 Revenue: US$218.9bn

Number of Employees: 102,579

CEO: Patrick Pouyanné

Founded: 1924, France

Digital twins provide manufacturers with a multitude of opportunities to save on cost. By detecting early mechanical defects, repairs can be faster and cheaper. Digital twins also enable more effective product research and design, removing the need for costly prototypes. 

Product lifecycle management is made easier through digital twins, allowing manufacturers to test various approaches to end-of-life and final processing. By making this decision easier, manufacturers save on cost. 

TotalEnergies is a leading manufacturer that employs digital twins to heighten the efficiency of their gas and oil operations. They use digital twins to simulate and optimise production and drilling processes, greatly reducing costs.

2. Safety compliance & risk management

Company: Toyota 

2023 Revenue: US$274bn

Number of Employees: 375,235 

CEO: Koji Sato

Founded: 1937

Digital twins are an incredibly cost-effective way to simulate and avoid risks. By running various operational scenarios, operators across verticals can identify potential hazards and devise proactive safety measures. 

For manufacturing verticals where safety is critical, such as energy or aviation, digital twins can simulate natural disasters and large-scale accidents, removing the associated risk and cost of emulating these conditions in real life. 

By simulating risk, manufacturers grow better at devising contingency plans and their accuracy in assessing safety increases. Toyota EU exemplifies this, with their wide-scale factory adoption of digital twins to mitigate risk.

Toyota EU trials a range of “what-if” scenarios, allowing its engineers to access a detailed 3D survey. In this survey they can apply modifications, avoiding unnecessary risks, costs, work, and time when developing new products.

3.Supply Chain Streamlining

Company: Mars

2023 Revenue: US$45 bn

Number of Employees: Around 140,000

CEO: Poul Weihrauch

Founded: 1911

Digital twins are a game-changer when it comes to supply chain operations, enabling manufacturers to have a comprehensive view of logistics, operations and potential bottlenecks.

For this reason, the global supply chain digital twin technology market is seeing unprecedented growth. The market is projected to surpass USD 2.8 Billion in 2023 and reach US$8.7bn by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.0% from 2024 to 2033. 

One global manufacturer embracing this dimension of digital twins is Mars. The leading confectionery, food and pet care manufacturer has created a digital twin of its supply chain using Microsoft Azure, Cloud and AI.

This system processes and analyses data generated by production machines in its facilities to optimise supply chain effectiveness. 

4. Enterprise digital transformation 

Company: General Electric 

2023 Revenue: $67.9bn

Number of Employees: 125,000

CEO: H. Lawrence "Larry" Culp Jr.

Founded: 1892

By fusing the digital and physical realms, digital twins have the capacity to improve overall enterprise performance. Data from digital twins provides insight into the success of business processes and strategy, helping leaders identify inefficiencies and areas of strength.

A leader in this use of technology for holistic enterprise improvement is General Electric. The manufacturer helped pioneer the Industrial Internet of Things, offering a diverse array of digital twin resources from systems to processes to assets to elements. 

GE’s Predix Operations Performance Management solution greatly complements digital twins. As a complete on-premises, control-to-cloud analytics solution, GE Predix OPM provides real-time visibility and insights into operations to solve performance problems faster. 

5.Enhancing sustainability

Company: AWS (Amazon Web Services)

2023 Revenue: US$90.8 bn

Number of Employees: Operates within Amazon, which employs over 1.6 million

CEO: Adam Selipsky

Founded: Officially launched in 2006

Manufacturers around the world seek to reduce carbon emissions. Digital twins can be used to monitor and analyse the carbon footprint of operations, giving manufacturers strategic insight to help them adhere to environmental standards. 

Minimising emissions, managing waste, and simulating the effects of new regulations can all be achieved through digital twins.

Digital twins can also stimulate the environmental impact of manufacturing products, helping leaders ensure minimal environmental disruption by investing in eco-friendly forms of building.

AWS, driven by its own strong sustainability commitments, can help provide insight into how digital twins can enhance sustainability. Through its reference architecture, AWS highlights how the technology can help fine-tune energy consumption patterns, leading to significant reductions in scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. 

AWS also highlights how digital twins help manufacturers look beyond current industrial waste management models, to more circular arrangements. 

The reference architecture incorporates AWS IoT SiteWise, a managed service that makes it easy to collect and monitor data from industrial equipment at scale and AWS IoT SiteWise Edge, a service installed on local hardware or AWS devices which streamlines on-premises data organisation. 

6. Predictive maintenance

Company: Chevron

2023 Company Revenue: US$196.9 bn

Number of Employees: 45,600

CEO: Michael K. Wirth

Founded: 1879​

Digital twins are complex, made up of numerous different technological components like 3D CAD files, IoT sensors and in many cases AR visualisation. They are in essence an ecosystem of data communication, which help manufacturers analyse their present, past and predict the future. 

The sensors of a digital twin are continually monitoring equipment, processes and products, with incidents and accidents recorded. In time, a comprehensive history of each of these components forms, and patterns emerge. All this allows the digital twin to predict, with stunning accuracy, when and where issues will occur. 

This makes predictive maintenance reliable and continuous, helping manufacturers avoid costly downtime and keep their first-time fix rate high. Technicians can be more accurately hired and deployed based on the reality of what needs fixing, as opposed to rough estimates. 

Predictive maintenance is essential in the oil and gas industry, where incidents can pose deadly ecological and health consequences.

In these sectors digital twins are commonly used by manufacturers like Chevron, Shell and Equinor for compressor monitoring, tracking the performance, temperature and vibration of compressors with sensors to prevent failures and optimise efficiency.

7. Product design, prototyping & optimisation

Company: Rolls Royce

2023 Company Revenue: US$20.9bn

Number of Employees: 41,400

CEO: Tufan Erginbilgic

Founded: 1906

Digital twins are revolutionising the design process, making prototypes and costly product adjustments obsolete. Products can be tested, tweaked, validated, and experimented with before they even reach a physical form, ensuring a higher quality product.

The design space becomes risk-free, allowing incredible material, design and system innovation, pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible. 

This process also enhances sustainability, by removing the wasted resources of typical prototyping and keeping every aspect of the design process virtual.

A manufacturer that has used digital twins extensively for design is Rolls Royce, with its IntelligentEngine program.

This program creates digital twins for every engine they produce, allowing them to monitor performance, predict maintenance needs and reduce downtime.

By designing using virtual twins, Rolls Royce has made their engines more reliable and efficient, enhancing the customer experience. 

8.Testing products 

Company: GlaxoSmithKline

2023 Revenue: US$37.7bn

Number of Employees: 70,212

CEO: Emma Walmsley

Founded: 1715

Testing products is an incredibly vital, stringent process that involves a host of important cost and risk considerations. With digital twins, the weight of these costs and concerns is dramatically lifted. 

Products are far easier to test and fix in the digital realm, allowing manufacturers to meticulously study and observe their products without any ethical, sustainability or cost concerns.

Because digital twins store and share data, the testing process can also be refined, introducing new materials, functions and additions to improve product quality. 

In the pharmaceutical industry testing products is excruciatingly important. A faulty batch of products, like life-saving drugs, can dramatically impact the livelihood of customers and the financial health of the organisation. 

GlaxoSmithKline for this reason has embraced digital twins to test its products and to model vital patient-disease systems.

These include digital biological twins which use a patient's tissue samples to build a 3D disease model to test the progression of types of cancers and the impact of specific drugs.

9.Training staff

2023 Company Revenue: US$81.6bn

Number of Employees: Around 290,000

CEO: Roland Busch

Founded: 1847

Training and upskilling staff is of vital importance to today’s manufacturing industry. But it’s typically costly, risky and not guaranteed to be effective.

By training staff with digital twins, employees create a smoother, safer means for employees to learn about manufacturing and digital technologies. 

Digital twins enhance the immediacy and engagement of learning, increasing the likelihood that employees act on what they’ve learnt whilst empowering them with necessary knowledge and skills.

Siemens is a forerunner in this area, using digital twins in addition to other industry 4.0 technologies to train their workers. They have notably created a digital twin of their electric motor production processes and continue to expand its use across their network.

10. Improving customer experience

2023 Company Revenue: US$1.62bn

Number of Employees: 40,000

CEO: Selim Bassoul

Founded: 1961

The final incredible use of digital twins is their capacity to enhance customer experience. 

By collecting data and allowing for continuous improvement and reiteration, products and experiences can be tailored to customers by manufacturers. If a particular feature is popular, that feature can be expanded upon or updated further, enabling manufacturers to predict likely trends and areas they should invest in. 

One manufacturer that highlights the power of digital twins to improve customer experience is Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, the world’s largest regional theme park in North America. The company recently launched the largest digital alliance in the theme park industry, partnering with Google, Pure Imagination Studios, HCL Tech, Snowflake, Fueled and Dell to embrace industry 4.0. 

This alliance is the first of its kind in the theme park industry, embodying the transformative power technologies like digital twins are set to have on this industry- where risk and customer satisfaction are of paramount importance. 

“Our guests are at the centre of everything we do, and we want to give them the best possible experience when they visit our parks,” said Selim Bassoul, CEO of Six Flags. 

“By partnering with the best-in-class companies, we are using data and technology to accelerate innovation and revolutionise the theme park industry.”

The next step up from digital twins are virtual twins, which also have the power to dramatically elevate customer experiences.

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