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Digital Representations Deliver Bottom-Line Results
Aug. 16, 2018
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The two foundations of a digital transformation — the digital twin and the digital thread — offer new ways to trial practices, processes, and product concepts in a virtual environment.
These digital experiments allow companies to test safely, quickly, and without costly rework and revisions — helping to enable development and implementations of new workflows and product configurations that are immediately viable.
Digital Twin
The digital twin virtually mimics a company’s machines, controls, processes, workflows and systems. Through experiments and improvements on the digital twin, manufacturers gain insights into potential real-world behaviors of assets by:
Rockwell Automation has helped numerous organizations apply and leverage digital twins.
For example, a food manufacturer tested and validated a facility upgrade prior to implementation, helping it achieve 80% less downtime and a throughput increase of more than 10%.
Another large multinational virtually tested production scenarios (e.g., increasing output for a product promotion, changing to less costly production materials) saving millions of dollars with the same equipment.
Digital Thread
The digital thread offers a detailed, virtual perspective of information flows — production performance data (e.g., speed, downtime), product specification data (e.g., quality parameters, system rejects), supply-chain data (e.g., inventory levels, late deliveries, quality), etc.
Executives and leaders leverage the digital thread to help to evaluate and improve value streams in real time.
When integrated with manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the digital thread enables operators and assets to adjust on the fly, from fixing emerging quality problems to pulling material and component inventory to processes across a facility.
We helped a global manufacturer implement a digital thread alongside MES at most of its 20 manufacturing locations, resulting in a 50% lead time reduction to customers, a 50% reduction in defective parts and a 4% improvement in productivity. This performance boost increased both customer satisfaction and market share.
Many of your competitors are already achieving competitive advantage via their digital twins and digital threads. Start working in the virtual world — and make more profits in the real one – today.