What is a Digital Twin?

Simulations and digital twins both utilize digital models to represent the various processes of a system, but a digital twin provides a virtual environment that stays up-to-date, making it more flexible for applications across a product lifecycle.

A digital twin can be used during R&D and production all the way through to monitoring and maintenance. It unlocks synergies by providing a single source of truth across every department, from design to training to marketing.

Maplesoft has aligned with industry leaders to accept a common definition of a Digital Twin:

Benefits of Machine-Level Digital Twins

In industry, the Digital Twin offers unlimited possibilities beyond the design process. For teams that model machines and industrial systems, these include providing a virtual environment for designing, testing, monitoring, diagnostics, and for developing an extended reality (augmented, virtual or mixed reality) for visualisation and training.

Whilst there is a visual appeal to factory-level simulations, the whole design process sees an increase in value and scalability by applying the modeling at the machine level.

The key value proposition of machine-level Digital Twins originates from:

• Saving Time and Money on Designing: Virtual prototyping using MapleSim is cheaper and more versatile for product development than physical prototyping.
• Faster Control Testing: Virtual commissioning with MapleSim speeds up PLC code validation and reduces the risk of harming physical hardware when testing different control strategies. Our fast efficient simulation code has the fidelity to provide accurate results with real-time performance.
• Reduced Downtime: Accurate prediction of asset behaviour helps shape proactive maintenance, speed up the response by support teams and reduce downtime. The virtual environment can also be used for troubleshooting production performance issues.
• Reliable Modeling Responses: MapleSim models of production systems can be supplemented with operational data and then used for quality testing, developing diagnostics when monitoring fleets in real-time, and for forecasting business metrics, such as yield, utilization, or throughput.

Getting Started with Digital Twins

Most companies are excited by the opportunity and efficiencies of adopting digital engineering techniques but struggle to transform multiple systems at once, leaving them cautious that they will actually achieve the business targets through the process.

Based on our experience supporting customers across a range of industries, we offer a MapleSim roadmap to success that builds from digital models to digital twins and allows you to:

• Incrementally apply the simulation strategy in steps to align with your business goals.
• Reap the benefits of completing the early simulation stages before making plans to progress further.

Throughout this process we recommend that you:

MapleSim Roadmap to Machine-level Digital Twins

MapleSim provides an efficient flexible modeling environment for developing your digital twin. Creating a MapleSim digital model gives a virtual representation of your product and is the first step to applying virtual commissioning and digital twins to digitally transform your operations.

The progressive solution roadmap provides a framework to meet your business objectives quickly, with realistic commitments from your internal resources.

What do Fleet-level Digital Twins look like?

These blog articles show potential workflows when using MapleSim's powerful system-level modeling capabilities alongside cloud-based digital twins:

• AWS IOT Twinmaker for descriptive digital twins to manage the battery charge state for electric vehicles. To interact with a variation of this model, click here.
• AWS IOT Twinmaker for predictive digital twins to predict behaviour and degradation in real-time for a fleet of electric vehicles.
• Oracle Cloud Anomaly Detection service to provide modernized real-time monitoring of performance anomalies for a fleet of telehandlers across multiple warehouses.