Digital twin technology is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry by helping organizations improve the tracking of workers, production lines, and equipment. Manufacturing digital twins have several different applications that help organizations improve operational efficiency and realize greater cost savings.
Adopting a digital twin solution can provide several benefits for your manufacturing organization beyond just greater cost savings. Digital twins enable data-driven decision-making to help organizations drive continuous improvement.
What is a Digital Twin in Manufacturing?
A digital twin in manufacturing is a virtual replica or representation of a physical asset, process, or system. Digital twins in manufacturing utilize sensors and IoT devices to collect data from the physical environment, creating a virtual representation of the work site.
Digital twins incorporate real-time data integration, analytics, and simulation capabilities to enable advanced analysis and optimization of production lines and processes. Digital twins allow operations teams to monitor the performance of their assets and make data-informed decisions to improve efficiency, productivity, and product quality.
Applications for Digital Twins in Manufacturing
In the manufacturing industry, digital twin technologies allow for real-time monitoring, analysis, and optimization of nearly every aspect of a production line, as well as the facility. Beyond this, digital twins can be used in several ways in manufacturing settings.
1. Reduce Production Line Downtime
Industrial manufacturers lose an estimated $50 billion each year due to unplanned equipment downtime. Reducing equipment downtime as much as possible is key to improving production line efficiency and controlling production costs.
A digital twin solution such as Spot-r helps optimize production lines by analyzing data from sensors, machines, and other production line equipment to show real-time equipment downtime and predict future downtimes. Spot-r combines computer-vision cameras, AI-powered data analytics software, and in-field devices, providing a comprehensive equipment monitoring solution.
2. Equipment Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance
Digital twins in manufacturing allow manufacturers to remotely monitor and control their equipment assets in real time. Additionally, digital twins can provide predictive maintenance capabilities, so manufacturers can create accurate planned maintenance schedules. This reduces the need for on-site inspections and unplanned equipment downtime.
Equipment utilization is an important metric for manufacturers, as inefficient equipment utilization increases overall operational costs. With a digital twin IoT solution such as Spot-r, manufacturers gain full visibility into real-time equipment usage, equipment downtimes, and authorized users within one intuitive dashboard.
3. Identify Labor Productivity Bottlenecks
Digital twins are also used to help managers identify potential bottlenecks that are negatively impacting worker productivity. By transmitting data through sensors and wearable devices, managers can get instant insights into labor productivity metrics.
By providing real-time monitoring and tracking of personnel, a manufacturing digital twin such as Spot-r helps improve worksite productivity. With its customizable dashboard, managers are able to identify areas of inefficiency and make necessary changes to improve worker productivity.
For example, Spot-r helped one contractor see that workers had long wait times in the toolroom, signing in and out of the control room, and getting on to the jobsite at the beginning of their shift. With Spot-r, they were able to hire more staff, automate check-ins, and stagger shift start times to improve sitewide efficiency.
4. Quality Control and Defect Detection
A manufacturing digital twin analyzes data from sensors and cameras to detect product quality issues and defects in real-time. Manufacturers can then compare real-time data from the physical asset with the digital twin to identify deviations and implement corrective actions.
Digital twins often utilize predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms to proactively detect potential quality issues before they occur. By identifying product quality issues as they occur, manufacturing teams can quickly fix these issues, and overall product quality significantly improves.
5. Emergency Preparedness and Worker Safety
Digital twins in manufacturing don’t just enable better equipment monitoring and improved decision-making, they can also greatly improve emergency response procedures and overall worker safety.
Process manufacturing facilities are large, hazardous environments with several restricted-access zones. Keeping track of individuals entering and exiting those zones can be difficult with just CCTV security cameras, as CCTV can’t send automatic alerts if an unauthorized individual enters a restricted area.
A digital twin solution with computer vision cameras such as Spot-r can monitor restricted-access zones and provide instant alerts whenever an unauthorized individual enters a restricted area. This helps keep workers and contractors safe, and prevent any potential safety issues that come with unauthorized access.
Digital twin technology such as Spot-r can also enable greater worker safety by sending real-time alerts and automating emergency protocols. Spot-r includes wearable safety devices for workers and contractors, so during emergencies managers can identify where all workers are instantaneously and instruct them to meet at a mustering point. When a worker is injured on the job, managers receive a fall-detection alert and first responders are deployed right away.
6. Product Design and Development
By implementing a digital twin solution, manufacturers can simulate and test product designs virtually before beginning physical production. A manufacturing digital twin can compile real-time data from sensors and IoT devices on physical assets, and this data can be used to refine and improve product design.
During the product development and testing phases, digital twins can make it much easier to identify and address design flaws and performance issues. A digital twin can also enable rapid prototyping through virtual simulations instead of building multiple physical models, which can be time-consuming and expensive.
Improve Production Efficiency with Digital Twins in Manufacturing
Digital twin technology in the manufacturing industry will continue to reshape industrial operations and revolutionize manufacturers’ businesses. But the need for manufacturers to adopt a digital twin is becoming increasingly essential as competitors adopt IoT and digital twin solutions.
Our digital twin IoT solution, Spot-r, meets the unique safety and productivity requirements of large process manufacturing organizations. Spot-r is entirely customizable to your operational processes, and provides comprehensive data analytics and AI-powered recommendations for managers to help reduce unplanned downtime, improve production efficiency, and realize greater cost savings.
Not only does Spot-r help your organization achieve these outcomes, Spot-r also helps drive continuous improvement and innovation in your organization by enabling data-driven decision-making. All data such as equipment downtime, OEE, and time on tools is aggregated into one intuitive dashboard, so operations teams have full insight into potential bottlenecks, safety hazards, and workforce productivity.
Deploying Spot-r has helped our clients increase time-on-tools by an average of 10% within the first quarter and realize productivity gains of 25% or more, translating into millions of dollars that can be reallocated within a worksite.
Book a Demo of Spot-r Today
See how Spot-r can drastically improve your organization’s production efficiency by booking a demo or learning more about our digital twin solutions for process manufacturing organizations.