Digital Twins

Industrial manufacturing companies have recognized the promising potential of digital twins as a future technology. According to a Gartner study, only 13 percent of all large companies with ongoing IoT projects in the major industrialized nations are currently using digital twins. For 62 percent of those surveyed, such projects are at least in the planning phase.

Those companies that are already using digital twins, however, are far from utilizing them to their full potential. So far, they have mostly functioned as data-providing systems or are used for backup and error analysis. This is the conclusion of the "Digital Twin Readiness Assessment" study conducted by Fraunhofer IPK and msg in 2020. For example, the opportunites of automated value-added services and the design as autonomous or adaptive systems have so far been considered in few concepts.  

In order to exploit the full potential of digital twins, we are developing customized solutions in close cooperation with our partners and customers. We network digital twins with each other, making it feasible to map entire production lines at low cost in terms of time and money. In doing so, we always keep an eye on the aspect of sustainability, because the technology also offers new possibilities in this field.

Our researchers have developed an integrated engineering environment for pilot plants that allows for cost-effective development of interlinked production systems and reliable testing of complex processes. A digital twin of the modular development environment ensures that the two robots are automatically configured for each assembly step.

Advantages of the solution

using the automation of an assembly process for professional tools as an example

Time and cost savings of our robot-based engineering environment versus a traditional pilot plant:

• Piloting of the plant in only 12 weeks instead of 12 months
• Costs approximately only 175,000 instead of over 2 million euros