What is the Digital Twin?

Customer benefits

The added value to be unlocked is manifold. The DMG MORI DIGITAL TWIN, for example, differentiates its customer benefits into three areas:

• Increasing the number of spindle hours used productively
  • Shifting non-production activities such as run-in processes and programming to the virtual world
  • Preventing machine downtime due to collisions
• Reduction of component costs
  • Reduction of cycle times through process optimization and transparency of cost drivers
  • Prevention of rejects through prior simulation and simplified defect detection 
• Empowerment of employees
  • Reduced defect rate through early training and, if necessary, ongoing training
  • Simplification of complicated work tasks by increasing transparency

Realistic test machining and trainings

In concrete terms, DMG MORI DIGITAL TWIN can therefore be used, among other things, to develop a planned machine completely in virtual space and to simulate, analyze and improve its capability with virtual controls, tools, clamping devices and workpieces until the result meets all expectations of the innovation. Every keystroke on the control, every tool change, every clamping situation, every axis movement, every spindle load: Everything can be digitally scrutinized and optimized with and on a Digital Twin. And that, mind you, even before the production of the "real" machine is tackled.

With DMG MORI DIGITAL TWIN, a planned machine can be developed completely in virtual space and its capability simulated, analyzed and improved with virtual controls, tools, clamping devices and workpieces.

Furthermore, customers can then perform realistic test machining of their components while the machine is still being built. They can perfect CNC programs for their new machine and train their staff even before it is installed on their own store floor. And once installed, the machine can continuously communicate information to its Digital Twin about the status of the machine and jobs in progress. The data obtained in this way could be used to continuously improve processes and make well-founded operational and strategic decisions.

It almost seems as if the possibilities of virtuality only end at the limits of human imagination. Especially since digital twins are not loners, but can also interoperate with and among each other on the basis of a common syntax and semantics. What has been described above for the machine therefore also applies in a figurative sense to robotized manufacturing cells or to automated manufacturing systems with any number of machines, pallets and tools, as well as to autonomous transport vehicles and their routes within a store floor.

The only prerequisite is that every element of a system and every property of a service or process is also available with the associated data as a connectable digital twin. In any case, the more and the better the available information from the past and the more substantial the determined data from the present, the "smarter" the algorithms become and the more precise the analyses and the more accurate the answers. This is especially true when it comes to recognizing events even before they happen in reality.

Definitions

What you, the reader, are still missing after all these explanations is a clear and concise definition of what a digital twin is. But even the scientific community has not really succeeded in agreeing on a clear and definable answer. Of course, we don't want to deprive you of a small selection of the definitions we have researched: