Through its working groups, the consortium assists organizations in tackling challenges related to the management of systems and data in technology. Subgroups publish their findings.

With the growing interest and use of digital twins, the Digital Twins Consortium has positioned itself as an authority that organizations can rely on when exploring and using technology that creates virtual representations of real-world physical systems.

Founded in May 2020 with just a few members, the Boston-based consortium has grown to include nearly 175 corporate, governmental, and educational members, with around 120 joining in the first five months of the group.

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

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

The consortium’s growth aligns with the recent expansion of digital twins in the aerospace, manufacturing, construction, facility management, disaster preparedness, and other industries.

Digital twin technology has become so popular that many IT professionals see digital twins eliminating the need for physical prototypes in the next six years, according to a September survey conducted by simulation, IoT, and high-performance computing provider Altair.

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

“Many of our clients are using simulation technology to develop a higher-fidelity physical replica of their physical asset, which, in a nutshell, is a digital twin,” said Keshav Sundaresh, Global Director of Digital Twin Product Management at Altair.

Working Groups

The consortium defines digital twins as “virtual representations of real-world entities and processes synchronized at a specific frequency and fidelity.”

Organization members are part of 10 working groups that focus on various digital twin applications. For example, the consortium has a fintech working group that examines digital twin applications in the financial sector.

The natural resources working group helped a mining company understand why it couldn’t extract all the ore it needed from its mine. The working group used digital twin technology not only to identify what was wrong in the process but also to help the company prevent such failures from happening in the future.

The consortium also has a horizontal working group that focuses on common aspects and standards related to digital twin technologies, such as data and interoperability formats.

“We’re providing this general horizontal model with these different lenses to see… what are the differentiating elements related to digital twins in those different vertical working groups,” said Dan Isaacs, CTO of the consortium.

Why a Consortium Is Needed?

“They are creating a neutral space where different providers can come together and agree on what they need to agree on so they can start driving some of this [digital twins] interoperability,” said Paul Miller, a Forrester analyst.

Because early digital twins are vendor-specific and asset-specific, many companies ended up with different digital twins that don’t communicate with each other.

The consortium also helps organizations discover how different software (such as an IoT system and asset management view compressor) can communicate within a digital twin, said Alfonso Velosa, a Gartner analyst.

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

“If you don’t have the same approach to metadata across all the different tools you’re using to build the digital twin, they may not communicate well,” Velosa said.

While it takes between two weeks and three months to create a digital twin, most organizations want to keep them for one or two decades.

“This is a software asset that will be maintained as long as it provides value to the organization and, therefore, must be managed over time,” Velosa said.”

 SOURCE: www.techtarget.com WRITTEN BY: Esther Ajao