What is a Digital Twin?

Everything you need to know about Digital Twins
 
Digital Twin is most commonly defined as a software representation of a physical asset, system or process designed to detect, prevent, predict and optimize through real time analytics to deliver business value. At GE Vernova, we’re focused on how Digital Twins can help our customers across three core areas: Asset, Network and Process.
 
From Oil & Gas and Power Generation, to Electrical Grids and Manufacturing Operations – our Digital Twin software applies machine learning and advanced analytics (AI/ML) to near real-time monitoring of vast quantities of industrial data: from HMI/SCADA systems, time series, alarms, events, as well as weather and ambient temperature readings.
 
But what types of Digital Twins does GE Vernova specialize in, and how are industrials using them to realize value? What kind of outcomes can industrial companies expect?

Digital Twins are Core to Predictive Maintenance for the Energy Industry
 
Within our Asset Performance Management (APM) suite is our SmartSignal predictive analytics software, which is mission-critical for providing Digital Twins based on operational / fleet data of components (like pumps or compressors), critical assets (such as turbines) or systems of assets (think of an entire power station). Key markets are Power Generation and Oil & Gas, but it spans across industries as diverse as Mining, Metals, and Manufacturing.
 
Cost savings with Asset Digital Twins are significant. To date, our Industrial Managed Services team has used SmartSignal on behalf of customers to save them more than $1.6B. The amount of avoided cost would reach into the tens of billions if we were to add up what our customers have achieved using SmartSignal on their own.
 
We have more than 350 different Digital Twin ‘blueprints’ available for customers in its analytics catalog – meaning it’s easier than ever for industrial companies to rapidly get value from their digital twin investments. And these blueprints can be OEM-specific or agnostic. In other words, while our Digital Twins are based off our deep expertise as an OEM, they are not limited to GE Vernova equipment. They can be applied to any OEM, which is especially important given so many customers operate a mix of OEMs. 
 
In addition to cost savings, our customers have also avoided unnecessary emissions using our SmartSignal predictive analytics. 
 
You can read more about two, excellent examples below: 

Digital Twins Enable Increased Situational / Contextual Awareness for Greater Safety, Efficiency 

GE Vernova has a technology partnership with Visionaize, a provider of world-class operational 3D Digital Twin solutions. This technology is designed to help empower data-driven businesses with high accuracy visualization capabilities for operational use cases that can help to save time, reduce cost, and improve safety. Visionaize’s V-Suite Starter can be incorporated into GE Vernova's APM Mechanical Integrity software designed to help streamline maintenance activities and improve worker efficiency across asset intensive industries.
 
While industrial companies can choose to review data and information in any number of formats including plant blueprints, Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID), and Isometrics through various means of CAD/CAM software solutions, the implementation of V-Suite Starter is designed to allow users to view real-time and historical asset data on the 3D model to deliver timely and valuable insights at the point of action. The 3D visualizations of key asset information combine “see it, model it, and understand future behavior” to help asset-intensive companies solve key challenges associated with asset downtime, quicker time to resolution, maintenance costs, and workforce productivity.
 
Visionaize integrates 3D plant models with APM Mechanical Integrity to provide data-driven visualization of key APM Integrity attributes by color coding the model to filter out noise and focus on what matters most. The ability to dynamically visualize and contextualize data for operations and maintenance activities help make inspectors, planners, maintenance technicians, corrosion analysts, and Risk Based Inspection (RBI) analysts more efficient and effective in their daily jobs.
 
Utilizing 3D visualization in GE Vernova's APM solution can help improve worker safety and productivity with situational awareness and less time spent in hazardous environments. An accurate 3D model is designed to allow recovery planning even before workers can access the site itself to facilitate faster time to resolution. And it can help to optimize maintenance programs with more efficient scheduling to accelerate planned and unplanned downtime activities.

Helping Grid Operators See the Big Picture without Missing a Detail
 
Electrical grids are the world’s largest and most complex machines. In addition to keeping the lights on with reliable, available and affordable electricity, grid operators need to manage the impact of increasingly extreme weather, aging infrastructure, and the growing use of renewables on the grid. Network Digital Twin can help by helping operators create virtual models to better operate, analyze and optimize how the grid responds to these challenges.
 
Network Digital Twins can produce cost reductions of up to 30%, planning time reductions of up to 20% and reduction in new build and internal process costs up to 7%. Companies can also look to field inspection and back office productivity improvements by as much as 8% as well as improved network asset analysis and data accuracy.
 
Using a combination of operational data from across the network, GE Vernova's ADMS and GIS technologies help grid operators create a Network Digital Twin, which provides a connected view of the end-to-end network of assets, based on real operational data.  It includes as-is, to-be, and real-time views of the network and enables all departments to contribute and consume data that help deliver better outcomes. Network Digital Twins allows teams from the control center to the field to make smarter, faster decisions that help to ensure that the lights stay on regardless of the challenges on the ground.
 
In Australia, Energy Queensland integrated its Advanced Distribution Management Solution (ADMS) and its Geographic Information System (GIS) to deliver a single source of truth across the enterprise. This Network Digital Twin provides a consistent and shared network model representing the as-built and as-operated status of the company’s grid.

The Golden Batch for Manufacturers
 
Process Digital Twins help manufacturers meet the challenges of fast-changing consumer demand, regulatory requirements and looming generation knowledge gap. Process Digital Twins create models of ‘the best way’ to run a process in a given environment – often referred to as ‘the golden batch’. By identifying the most optimal process to manufacture a given product, plant operators can ensure they are consistently delivering against quality, cost and volume objectives.
 
Most customers have continuous improvement teams driving initiatives to improve product quality, reduce manufacturing process variation and costs.
 
And while 90% of manufacturers are already investing or planning to invest in predictive capabilities in the next five years, and 75% are investing in machine learning, Process Digital Twins are very early in their application compared to Network and Asset twins. This is due in part to the high variability of manufacturing processes (equipment, scale, environment, complexity and poor data quality).
 
Through our CSense Operations Performance Management solutions, GE Vernova has already delivered Process Digital Twins in multiple industries, including Mining, Food & Beverage, Oil & Gas and Power Generation, and Water & Wastewater industries.

What Does the Future Hold for Digital Twins?
 
Digital Twin software is helping industrial companies to adapt to an increasingly challenging landscape, impacted by regulatory, market and technological trends. Today, we are seeing industrial companies move from Digital Twin as a pilot or as a use case to Digital Twin at scale, transforming whole organizations at incredible speed and scale. 
 
We will see the development of easy-to-use tools and out-of-the-box analytics on data, including sensor health, predictive product quality, and batch process control that leverage real world Digital Twin experiences and Lean technologies to drive expected outcomes.
 
The key is to make sure companies engage with an experienced vendor who can size the technology for that company’s particular application.  At GE Vernova, we’re investing in making Digital Twins more accessible and more powerful by combining waste elimination concepts from Lean with advanced analytics.