Digital Twin Consortium Accelerates Technology Growth

With the growing interest in and use of digital twins, the Digital Twin Consortium has established itself as a trusted authority for organizations to explore and use technologies that create virtual representations of real-world physical systems.

Founded in May 2020 with just a few members, the Boston-based consortium has grown to include about 175 corporate, government and educational members, with about 120 joining in the group’s first five months. I participated.

Among the original members were Microsoft, Dell, physics and simulation modeling vendor Ansys, and property management and construction giant Lendlease.

The Consortium is a subgroup as part of the non-profit Object Management Group technology standards development organization.

The consortium’s growth corresponds to the recent expansion of digital twins into aerospace, manufacturing, construction, facilities management, disaster recovery, and other industries.

According to a September study by simulation, IoT, and high-performance computing vendor Altair, digital twin technology is so prevalent that many IT professionals expect digital twins to create physical prototypes in the next six years. We believe that the need for

Another digital twin group, the Industrial Digital Twin Association (based in Frankfurt, Germany), has about 80 corporate members.

Keshav Sundaresh, Global Director of Product Management for Digital Twins, said: in Altair.

walking group

The consortium defines a digital twin as “a virtual representation of real-world entities and processes synchronized with a specified frequency and fidelity.”

Members of this organization are part of 10 working groups working on various applications of digital twins. For example, the consortium has a fintech working group investigating the application of digital twins in the financial sector.

The Natural Resources Working Group helped mining companies understand why they couldn’t extract all the ore they needed from their mines. The working group used digital twin technology to not only find process pain points, but also help companies proactively prevent those types of failures.

The consortium also has horizontal working groups focused on commonality and standards related to digital twin technologies, such as data and interoperability formats.

Consortium CTO Dan Isaacs said:

Why we need a consortium

“They are creating a neutral space where different vendors can come together and agree on what they need to agree on so they can start pushing some of their interoperability. [of digital twins]said Gartner analyst Paul Miller.

Early digital twins were vendor and asset specific, so many companies ended up with different digital twins that did not communicate with each other. The Digital Twin Consortium and others, including a German-based group, are helping organizations piece together different digital twins, Miller said.

They can create a neutral space where different vendors can come together and agree on what they need to agree on and start pushing some of this interoperability. [of digital twins].

The consortium will also help organizations understand how different software (such as IoT systems and asset management view compressors) can communicate within the digital twin, said Alfonso Velosa, another Gartner analyst. says.

For example, in a railroad infrastructure virtual environment, IoT systems, asset performance management software, ERP and field service management systems work together in a digital twin.

“If all the different tools you use to build your digital twin don’t have the same approach to metadata, they may not work together,” says Velosa.

Building a digital twin takes about 2 weeks to 3 months, but most organizations want to keep their digital twins for 10 to 2 years.

“This is a software asset that will bring value to your organization and will need to be managed over time,” says Velosa.