The days where separate teams only worked within small sections of a project are disappearing.
When it comes to large projects, the devil is in the details and the same is true for the operation of the asset during its lifetime. Each team member, part, and machine across the manufacturing design and production process needs to be orchestrated in sync to efficiently construct a quality product. When that doesn’t happen, it means more than lost productivity. It means a disconnect. It means both people and processes are not working as well as they could. This isn’t a challenge unique to one company or a single industry.
Clarity Company
The goal of the Digital Twin is to boost efficiency and keep our cross-functional teams connected with a single source of data that connects people and addresses program needs in real-time. Ultimately, the Digital Twin improves the ability to industrialise and drives down project and production costs, thus elevating project performance beyond industry norms.
Digital Twinning and the Digital Thread
When it comes to manufacturing and operational challenges, digital twinning is winning. Twinning incorporates information across all steps in the conception, design, fabrication, and build processes. One single source of truth that combines with digital twin capability. This is done by combining a three-dimensional model with the asset information, operational information like maintenance and real-time data. The digital twin combines all this data, allowing everyone on the team whether they are in engineering, supply chain, construction, fabrication, commissioning or operations to have clarity when making decisions.
The Twin allows us to validate our next step, ahead of time, and finetune on performance without trial and error.
Operations manager
The digital twin enables:
- Information sharing in real-time with external and internal team members, partners and clients.
- Engineers can simulate in the virtual world and make changes to a piece of equipment or part without disrupting fabrication or assembly.
- Simulations can be performed at any point in the process, cutting down on hiccups or interruptions.
The beauty of the digital thread is that it connects design, fabrication, and the supply chain in one seamless architecture. Every part of the manufacturing process talks to one another. This gets at the most important part of this system: connecting people and process.
Digital transformation takes that passion for the work and streamlines it, making it even easier to stay connected. As a result, people are reinvigorated, supply chains are efficient, and poised for continued success.
When the two aren’t connected, frontline managers do not have the information they need to make immediate decisions impacting their process. For example, they might be chasing down a part they no longer need, while a piece of equipment that costs tens of millions of dollars is sitting idle. It results in lost time, delaying the build on an expensive piece of equipment for an issue that’s preventable.
With The Digital Twin, multiple teams, from those in design, construction to those in operation, can look at the same set of data, while working synchronously. This enables everyone to see exactly where parts, processes, and projects are tracking. The digital thread significantly enhances our collaborative integrated product teams, keeping projects moving quickly and efficiently. Each person can apply their unique perspective to the same set of information everyone else has. It means all the people working on a single program can make more informed, high-value decisions.