Concepts such as digital twin and digital thread have emerged as crucial elements driving innovation across industries. While both contribute to enhancing processes and products in a virtual environment, it's essential to understand the distinctions between these two concepts. In this article, we will delve into the key differences and similarities between digital twin and digital thread, drawing inspiration from previously explored articles, What is a Digital Twin? From Concept to Reality and What is a Digital Thread: Mastering the Digital Thread Journey.
The digital twin is the present representation of a product or system, mirroring the machinery, controls, workflows, and systems of a company. On the other hand, the digital thread acts as a record of a product or system's entire lifecycle, from creation to removal. These concepts form the foundation of digital transformation, offering new ways to assess practices and product concepts in a virtual space.
A digital thread unifies diverse data sets to uncover insights, serving as a necessary prerequisite for building a true digital twin. The digital thread creates a closed loop between the digital and physical worlds, optimizing products, processes, and places, while the digital twin is a digital model representing its physical counterpart.
Digital threads aim to digitize and trace a product's lifespan by connecting various data sets, including designs, performance data, supply chain data, and software, thus complementing the capabilities of digital twins. Together, they facilitate the design, optimization, and analysis of both physical and digital processes throughout the product value chain. This integration extends into the digital market, allowing for traceability and identification of issues, such as in the case of a vehicle accident due to system faults.
While digital twins have historically played a significant role in the aerospace and defense aircraft industry, these concepts are now expanding into digital manufacturing and cyber-physical systems. Cyber-physical systems serve as digital copies of physical systems, detailing their status and properties in smart factories. The implementation of a digital thread with a single framework strategy in manufacturing systems proves ideal for controlled data analysis throughout a product's lifecycle, contributing to real-time data delivery in simulation and assembly processes.
Digital threads bring improvements to manufacturing by enhancing product quality, reducing costs, and fostering efficient communication among planners, designers, and machinists. Mistakes in engineering specifications can be prevented through the synchronization of data across the product value chain, and the use of cloud services reduces product costs. This interconnected communication system also enables real-time data capture and analysis, increasing the efficiency of product manufacturing.
Digital thread benefits include increased collaboration across departments, processes, and products, along with advanced organizational agility through continuous data flow. Digital twins, on the other hand, offer real-time monitoring, risk assessment, and accelerated product innovation through digital mirroring. Both technologies contribute to driving business outcomes, improving operational effectiveness, achieving product differentiation, and increasing quality and productivity.
As industrial enterprises continue to implement digital twin and digital thread technologies, opportunities to drive business outcomes will continue to expand. Integration with augmented reality further enhances these technologies, providing a lens through which workers can access information in context from both the digital thread and digital twin.
In conclusion, while digital twin and digital thread share common goals of driving digital transformation, their roles, applications, and benefits differ significantly. Understanding these differences is crucial for organizations aiming to leverage the full potential of these technologies. As technology continues to evolve, the combined power of digital twin and digital thread will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of manufacturing and business operations.