For many busi­ness­es, the fac­to­ry of the future is already here. Robot­ics, sen­sors, the Inter­net of Things (IoT), machine learn­ing, and more are inte­grat­ed through­out plants every­where, across indus­tries. And behind this increas­ing­ly intel­li­gent indus­tri­al world, you’ll also find elec­tron­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al mod­els run­ning par­al­lel with the phys­i­cal pieces of equipment.

What Exact­ly Is Dig­i­tal Twin?

This type of advanced mod­el­ing pow­ered by con­nect­ed sen­sor data and IoT is known today as ​“dig­i­tal twin.” It allows com­pa­nies to build data-rich mod­els of every­thing from air­plane tur­bines to esca­la­tors and elec­tron­ic door handles.

Cre­at­ed by soft­ware engi­neers and data sci­en­tists with an under­stand­ing of mechan­i­cal form and func­tion, a dig­i­tal twin can run con­cur­rent­ly with a phys­i­cal prod­uct to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor its life cycle. Dig­i­tal twin can also cre­ate sim­u­la­tions that apply arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ​“learn” how to mir­ror more real­is­tic or life­like conditions.