In this episode, we go through some common perceptions about digital twins and declare if they are true or false.
CORINA
Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of our podcast ”IoT for the Rest of Us”. My name is Corina Maiwald and I am the Chief Marketing Officer at BaseN. Today I’m sitting down with our CEO Mr. Pasi Hurri to do some myth busting around digital twins and as well the Internet of Things. So, let’s jump right into this. Pasi, true or false: A digital twin must always have one single physical twin attached to it.
PASI
So this is a question of identity and and we think that each physical object, however mundane, should actually have a unique identity. And that actually leads to the conclusion that each digital twin actually has only one physical twin. But that doesn't say that those couldn't be copied and replicated, but in order to to make production and manufacturing sustainable and trackable, we see that the serialization of each physical objects is of paramount importance. That we create a digital twin infrastructure which is mapped to a very finegrained world, so that we can start understanding the material flows. And the usage and lifecycle of all all physical objects. Because right now the industry is in a fire-and-forget mode. Mostly companies do not care about their products after one year, two years, three years after their guarantee or warranty times are over. We see that underlying fabric of digital twins must be finegrained enough. So at the end I would say that this is true.
CORINA
Alright. That’s the first one is covered and we move on to the next myth to bust. True or false: There can’t be digital twins for all physical objects. When we look at an ordinary person, it’s impossible to think of a future when every single thing that we own would come with a digital twin.
PASI
This is actually false because there can be a digital twin for all physical objects. Because if you think of a human being, even, it consists of millions of cells which actually have their own DNA and RNA to control their behavior. And this is an organic system that was developed by evolution, and we can actually be at least on par and even better with the digital twin and spime infrastructure to make also the world around us sustainable. Because humans are fairly sustainable as organisms. So, we we should look at wider systems around us and also remember that digital twins can be combinations of smaller digital twins, which again are a combination of smaller components. And when we go further, we need to also consider how much data needs to be transported back and forth with the physical and digital twin. But in this setting the key thing is to realize that the digital twin is actually the real product and the physical assets around it are just side products and side materials for it.
CORINA
Alright, I think the human analogy explained it quite well what kind of future we possilby can be facing when all things around us do have digital twins. So how about a follow-up question now: What about the connection of digital twins and the Internet of Things. Are they actually the same, or are they related, or can they actully be separate from each other? What’s your take on that?
PASI
So the Internet of Things, it is actually a kind of a neologism of the Internet, which is a network connecting very heterogeneous net items and people. How we see it, the Internet of Things is just the networking capability. So, it is a platform where you can have digital twins communicate with their physical counterpart. So that that's the network part. But of course, if you look at the current publications, many times these terms are being blurred and then the Internet of Things also means some of the analytics and some of the computing that is required locally or in the cloud. But to keep things understandable, we see that the Internet of Things is just a network that is tying together the digital and physical twins in all kinds of environments.
CORINA
One other true or false question: Does every digital twin do the same, meaning from collecting data to storing and tracking the entire lifecycle of it to analysing e.g. the performance and providing input for optimization?
PASI
That would be false because the simplest digital twin is actually just the state that … if you produce, let's say, an iron bar in afactory. And it has a unique ID that it has been produced at this time and it has been delivered out from the factory at this time. That is already a digital twin for the iron bar that was created, and it doesn't have to be connected ever after, but it's still an important digital twin. And the importance is to ensure that the data and the state of the iron bar remains the same. So if there is no new data if it just goes to the customer and that it’s now casted in the concrete at the customer. The kind of key realization is that the manufacturer still has to understand where the bar is and how its lifecycle is managed so that they can come back to the customer after 50 years saying that “You know that your iron bars might require replacement at this time. So how about we deliver a new iron bar for your building?” So, there are digital twins that are extremely data intensive that are sending gigabits of data per second, in the forms of video surveillance and things like that. And then there are digital twins that are sending data only when they are manufactured or once per year or even less than that. You know, all depends on the use case and how much is required for the entire lifecycle to be analysed and understood by the supplier and the customer.
CORINA
That was very interesting to hear how there can be different levels of data intensity depending on such different use cases. Here’s another question: True or false – there are certain industry fields where digital twins are not useful?
PASI
This is also false because this boundary is only about innovation. So we see that every industry field needs digital twins and a new understanding of sustainable and lifecycle-tracked products. It might be that some industries catch on much earlier than others, but it's kind of a question of Library of Alexandria that, you know, that do you need to record all writings or all poetry? All literature of the world? Yes, it's painstaking and it takes some time, but that's the only way that wisdom and knowledge are being inherited and then transferred from one generation to another. So so I see that digital twins and the architecture for digital twins, that's our library of Alexandria that we need to ensure that the next generation has, in order to create a sustainable world with sustainable manufacturing sustainable way of life in general, if we look at the challenges that we have in this world right now, it is absolutely imperative that we know what our actions are causing and the digital framework and fabric is the is the only place where we can truly model how our actions are affecting the world in the future.
CORINA
Thank you, Pasi. That was another great analogy. How about this next question then: true or false – getting digital twins up and running is very pricey and takes a long time.
PASI
This is clearly false because starting with digital twins can be just a change of mindset that the thinking that your product is no longer a singular consumable that is thrown away from your factory. The first step could be just serializing and creating an ID for each of your component of your product that you are creating. It can be very cheap and sometimes companies get very quick results by changing the mindset. But on the other hand, sometimes changing the mindset is very pricey because you need to convert so many people from there earlier thinking to the new kind of thinking and the kind of sustainable thinking. And I have sometimes mentioned that one of the issues is that you have prestigious universities all around the world who are actually teaching the old way right now. So it takes quite a long time for the academic establishment actually to catch up with the digital world because there is so strong thinking still that you have capital, you have raw materials, you have factory, you have production line and you have products. Then you throw them out your factory and then you restart this process. But now in today's world that's completely wrong. But this is still what what is being taught and in all the top universities.
CORINA
One more question coming your way: A digital twin needs to communicate at all time with it’s physical representation – true or false?
PASI
No, this is false. I think I mentioned it in earlier questions already. That the simplest digital twin just has one time information that is attached to it during the manufacturing phase. The need of communication, it only arises from the utility of the of the product or service in question. So sometimes you can have the massive data feed going back and forth, sometimes you have yearly data coming from the physical representation. So, this is highly dependent on the application. And the technologies how to transport the data, they don't have to be digital at all times. Sometimes it can be a person making a phone call to telling that you know that this this this object that I have bought it has now changed color and that can be the communication path so that people just tell each other and then someone records it to the digital twin that now the the physical state changed. So, it's important not to limit digital twins to any kind of digital communication. Because it's mostly about the mindset of maintaining everything you manufacture, you create yourself, you develop in in a digital fabric.
CORINA
I think that was a very important argument that the mindset can be the biggest challenge that companies are facing when looking at everything around digital transormtion. And last but not least – true or false: in companies that have digital twins for their products, the only stakeholders checking and interacting with the digital twins are R&D and engineering?
PASI
So this is patently false because the digital twin is first and foremost for the end user, for the customer. And the customer should have better efficiency, fast evolving service. So the customer is the main interaction point. And all the other stakeholders like R&D and engineering and marketing, they are merely the second level of the utilizers of the data and algorithms within the digital twins. Because in many cases in the new physical products it's often the digital interface that the customer initially runs into even. So it's really important to emphasize the end user and then sometimes there are also governmental access the digital twins of certain types. So, it actually touches all all people and processes that are somehow involved with the physical and the digital product.
CORINA
Thank you, Pasi, for busting some myths today. This was a fun episode to record and I hope it helps our listeners to make more sense of digital twins and what they mean in practice. This concludes this episode and we hope you will tune in again for the next one. Subscribe when you don’t want to miss when we drop the next episode. We have more interesting episodes in the making and some great guests joining as well. Bye, bye everyone and until next time!