When the Digital Twin of Information Becomes a Driving Force for Digitalization in Companies

Dr. Jörg Nagel, Managing Director of Neoception GmbH, explains the role played by digital twins and platform technologies and how companies can transform their fragmented data streams into a sustainable information model. The company was founded in 2017 as an industry-oriented IT solution provider within the Pepperl+Fuchs Group and now supports companies with its own product portfolio in creating a stable digital foundation for automation and innovation from distributed data structures.

Dr. Nagel, many companies talk about the digital twin. You deliberately use the term digital information twin. What distinguishes it from the classic understanding?

The digital information twin comprises all relevant information relating to a product or asset. This includes technical features, manuals, certificates, simulation models, usage data and much more. Just imagine: A digital location with all information exists for every asset – regardless of the source.

What role do platform technologies and digital twins play in the implementation of data-driven use cases in companies?

Digitization projects often require information from different sources such as ERP systems, product databases, etc. These interfaces have to be implemented anew for each additional use case. The economic benefits are quickly eaten up by the spiral of effort. Digital information twins create a decoupling of unstructured and diverse data sources and the individual use cases.

This allows data to be provided and reused across systems. However, in order to actually leverage this potential in day-to-day business, more than just a concept is needed, namely a platform that not only provides such twins, but also simplifies their creation and maintenance.

This is precisely why we developed the Digital Twin Infrastructure (DTI). It makes it possible to transfer content from existing systems into a standardized, machine-readable data model as required, thereby reducing technical complexity. This makes use cases scalable and specialist departments can access reliable information without having to rely on individual interfaces or IT support.

How difficult is it to transfer existing data sources or systems into your platform and create digital twins?

This is precisely the challenge we have set ourselves. Many tools available on the market for creating digital twins assume that the underlying data is already standardized and fully structured. In practice, however, the mere provision of such content is only the last step in the overall process. The real work, and therefore also the basis for overall economic success, lies in enabling the preparation and standardization of information from different sources in a scalable and needs-based manner. Our Digital Twin Infrastructure was developed precisely for this purpose. After a one-off integration into the company’s own infrastructure, it supports companies in preparing existing data in this way without any programming effort. True to the motto: it doesn’t always have to be easy, but it must be worthwhile. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS), an international standard for the structured description of products and assets, serves as the technological basis.

You talk about standards. Why are standards relevant for digital twins?

It is only through standards that digital twins can be used economically and across system or company boundaries. They ensure that information is not only structured consistently internally, but is also clearly understood externally, regardless of which system it comes from or which partner it is shared with. The AAS is an open industry standard that provides a uniform structure for digital twins. In combination with semantic standards such as ECLASS, which clearly define terms, features and classifications, a consistent and machine-readable description of products, components or machines is possible. This is the basis for automated data exchange, regulatory verification and new digital business models.

Companies will soon have to offer a digital product passport. What role can the digital information twin play in this?

The digital product passport will become mandatory in the coming years, and the requirements for transparency, traceability and up-to-dateness of product information will increase considerably. Companies that already use digital information twins today are already creating the ideal basis for this. As a technological framework, the AAS fulfills all the requirements formulated by the EU.

So is it worth automating your manual processes on the way to a digital product passport?

Absolutely. The introduction of the digital product passport is just one example of a development that has long since begun. Information is increasingly becoming a strategic factor in industrial value creation. Those who start systematically organizing their data at an early stage and making it usable throughout the company will immediately tap into added value such as more efficient service processes or digital product documentation. Companies can also use this as a basis for developing new data-based offerings, strengthening direct customer relationships and expanding their position in the market. This turns an often neglected IT topic into a concrete competitive advantage.

»Companies that structure their data and make it accessible organization-wide immediately unlock measurable value.«

Artificial intelligence is considered a key technology for automation. What role does artificial intelligence play in the context of digital information twins?

Artificial intelligence can only function reliably if it can access structured, consistent and machine-readable data. Many companies still lack the basis for this. This is precisely where digital information twins come into play: they make information of a significantly higher quality usable for AI. A digital information twin thus creates the prerequisite for AI-supported analyses, predictions or decision-making logic to be used at all. Investing in a clean database today not only enables the first steps towards automation, but also lays the foundation for the successful use of AI in day-to-day operations. In this role, the digital information twin becomes the digitalization engine, the central instance for data-supported decisions and sustainable competitive advantages.

Turn data into assets now!

With Neoception’s Digital Twin Infrastructure, you can make your company fit for AI, automation and the digital product passport. More information and personal support at: www.neoception.com

»Create digital twins today – this saves money, creates benefits and prepares you for AI and the digital product passport.«