The trend of The Times is rolling forward, and digitalization is changing human society in an irreversible trend. In the industrial sector, digitalization has become a key driver for the transformation and upgrading of today’s enterprises. Industrial software, as a programmed package of industrial technology and knowledge, is known as the soul of industrial digital transformation, and the future industry will be built on a variety of industrial software.

In the global landscape of industrial software, a purple patch is getting bigger and bigger from end to end. This is an industrial software company called AVEVA, which has a loud Chinese name in China – Sword Software. Recently, AVEVA held the 2023 Jianwei Software China User Conference, and we felt the strong industry influence and industry-leading product technology strength of this industrial software giant up close, and also had a clearer understanding of the future development of industrial software.

An increasingly purple industrial software giant

In 1967, AVEVA was born in a 3D Design project of the CAD Center of Cambridge University, which developed the world’s first 3D Plant design System PDMS (Plant Design Management System) in 1976. And in the subsequent decades of innovation, the product line and features continue to mature.

In 1996, AVEVA established an immersive virtual reality center for factory design, and in 2004, it acquired Tribon, a renowned ship design solution. In 2012, AVEVA launched its next generation 3D design tool, AVEVA Everything 3D.

The more important change came after 2017. In September 2017, Schneider Electric took control of AVEVA through a reverse merger, and transferred its industrial software business, Including Invensys’ Wonderware (human-machine interface), SimSci (process simulation and optimization), Avantis (asset management) and other industry leading brands that enjoy wide reputation in the industry, which it acquired in 2014, were all merged into AVEVA.

After the merger with Schneider Electric Software business, AVEVA can be described as a unique industrial software platform, which can help enterprises reduce the cost, time and risk of infrastructure projects from the asset life cycle dimensions such as plant design and construction, and maximize profitability through efficient planning and scheduling and monitoring control during plant operation.

In 2020, AVEVA spent $5 billion to acquire OSIsoft, a global real-time data software company, to complete the integration of industrial software applications and industrial data platforms. At this point, AVEVA has become one of the few leading digital solution providers in the world covering two dimensions of asset life cycle and operation life cycle. Its purple LOGO includes three industrial ecological chains of engineering design, operation and optimization, and can provide industrial customers with a complete, end-to-end product portfolio covering the whole industrial chain and the whole life cycle.

In January 2023, Schneider Electric completed its 100% acquisition of AVEVA, making AVEVA a leading global industrial software company valued at more than $10 billion.

Digital enterprise with full life cycle digital twin

Although digital transformation has been proposed for nearly a decade, enterprises still face many challenges in digital transformation. According to statistics, 70% of the world’s industrial enterprises have failed in digital transformation, and successful digital transformation can bring 10% profit improvement, 300% return on investment, 20% energy efficiency improvement. So how do you ensure a successful digital transformation?

Mr. Harpreet Gulati, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Information Management Business, AVEVA

At this user conference, Mr. Harpreet Gulati, Senior Vice President of AVEVA Software and head of Global Information Management business, attended and gave a speech on creating a new paradigm of industrial intelligence. “Based on the AVEVA Connect open platform, which enables the effective management of engineering and operational data, AVEVA can build digital twins and integrated visual analysis applications covering the entire life cycle for industrial enterprises, which supports both AVEVA’s own applications and third-party applications,” he said. Through the establishment of cooperation across the industrial chain, we will promote the leapfrog development from digital twins to digital enterprises.”

The new paradigm of industrial intelligence mentioned by Mr. Harpreet Gulati here actually refers to the use of digital twins throughout the entire life cycle of the plant, such as engineering design, production operation, and performance optimization, to integrate the engineering data of the entire asset life cycle, that is, the so-called static data, with the real data generated by the production and operation of the plant, that is, the so-called dynamic data. Unified integration into an open platform to create a virtual factory that corresponds to a real factory in real time.

The benefits of full-life digital twins are self-evident. First of all, the information island and process island in the industrial industry are broken, and the departments of different systems are connected in series with a complete and unified digital process. Secondly, the engineering design data is transmitted to the plant operation side through the digital twin, which can combine real-time operation and production data to continuously optimize operations, share information and insights, support customers’ scientific decision-making, mine data value, and improve engineering efficiency and operational efficiency. Finally, the factory digital twin system also provides data and architecture support for cross-call between engineering data and real-time data, data governance and visualization, equipment early warning monitoring and predictive maintenance, mechanism model construction, big data analysis, etc.

The digital twin of the full life cycle of AVEVA is built on the “data double base”, that is, the engineering asset data base, that is, the steady-state design parameters and other data of the equipment at the engineering design end, and the production operation data base, that is, the real-time data from all aspects of production, all levels and various systems. The data dual base is implemented by AVEVA Asset Information Management (AIM) and Operation Information Management Center (OIM), namely PI System.

The reason why AVEVA is able to offer a full-lifecycle digital twin unlike other industrial software companies is that after more than 50 years of development and continuous acquisition and integration, AVEVA has formed a digital product portfolio covering the full life cycle of the factory. It includes engineering design and management, process simulation, construction, digital delivery, operator training, data management, operations control, equipment asset management, production execution, production optimization and scheduling. These rich software products from plant design, construction, handover to operation and optimization allow AVEVA to become a seamless integrated platform through internal integration, let data flow, let data generate value, and truly achieve digital transformation.

Ms. Cui Jingyi, Vice President and General Manager of AVEVA China

Ms. Cui Jingyi, vice president of AVEVA Software and general manager of China, said, “In the past, relatively independent engineering data, operational data, supply chain data, etc., are now gradually merging, and the whole life cycle digital twin has gone beyond the original concept of software as a tool and a system, but as a larger platform. It brings all the data of the factory into this platform, ensuring the freedom, integrity, timeliness and accuracy of the data flow, and only with such a platform can help partners, enterprises, customers, suppliers and other enterprises throughout the supply chain be better able to collaborate.”