An Article By, David Tan, Chief Technology Officer
Traditionally we like to write an article at the beginning of the year about upcoming trends and technologies that we expect to see emerge in the next 12 months. When I started to think about and do that this week, I realized that I had covered most of the topics that were high on my radar in the last few newsletters. I think I’m just so excited about the emerging trends in technology that I find myself shouting about it from the rooftops whenever I can get someone to listen! So rather than revamp some of the same ideas, I’m going to talk a bit about something I’ve never mentioned, that in many ways brings it all together.
First, let’s run through some of the things I have been
saying will dominate our business technology in the very near future – if they
aren’t already. Artificial Intelligence,
Machine Learning, Virtual and Augmented Reality and Internet of Things to name
a few. What do you get when you bring
them all together? You get Digital
Twins. That’s what I want to talk about
– Digital Twins and how they will disrupt every industry on the planet and
beyond.
First, what is a digital twin? A textbook definition would be a computerized
replication of something in the real world generated by sensor data. Let me try to explain that in easier to understand
terms, using something very large. Let’s
say you operate a huge farm of windmills that harness wind to generate
electricity. These windmills are very
maintenance intensive, very expensive to support and probably spread out across
large distances. If you could leverage
IoT technology to monitor every aspect of the operation of those windmills,
combine the results from all the different windmills and put it into a computer
simulation model, you’d have a digital twin.
From here you’d be able to optimize performance, perform preventative
maintenance, streamline operations and test theories without having to employ a
small army of engineers.
The scope and range of what you can accomplish with digital
twins is hard to even comprehend. The
windmills are a great example, but probably outside of the scope of thought for
most small business owners. Same with
things like jet turbine engines or industrial manufacturing machinery among
just a few of the applications that companies like GE are testing with. GE happens to be one of the industry leaders
in creating and leveraging this technology.
They even created some interactive games you can play on their website
to get a better grasp on the power of the technology. For a minute, let’s think about this in a way
that probably talks more to you and your business.
Let’s say you are a company that distributes and manages
coffee machines to business offices. In
this scenario you charge monthly for the machine and supplies, and perform all
maintenance and replacement on the machines.
By the way, coffee machines could be anything from printers and copiers
to telephones, washing machines, or pizza ovens – it really doesn’t
matter. Anyway, you may have hundreds of
these machines in the field and you need to employ a fleet of engineers to
check, service and replace them, often in a reactive mode. If you could take all the sensor data
generated by those coffee machines and create a digital twin, you’d be able to
predict failures before they occur, evaluate what changes in conditions or
environment would mean to your business, and even test the performance and
profitability of different monthly service plans. All without leaving the office. Think of the cost savings and improvement in
customer satisfaction this could bring.
The concept of Digital Twins is a little larger and more
grand than I typically like to talk about in these columns. I like to talk about technology that will
impact businesses of all shapes and sizes, and on the surface, the things that
companies like GE are doing don’t exactly speak to that. I do believe however that the concepts are
important and powerful enough that the impact will be incredibly
far-reaching. Like I said, this has the
potential to disrupt every single industry in the world. Plus, it’s always fun when the different
topics and technologies I have been talking about for years come together to
form an even greater opportunity. This
is probably not something that will impact your business tomorrow, but as 2017
progresses, this trend will grow and within 3-5 years, hundreds of millions of
things will be represented by digital twins.
That’s something that’s worth paying attention to.
