From high-end manufacturing to traditional industry, industrial digital twin boiling point is coming

Digital twin was first used in the aerospace industry. NASA and the US Air Force Research Laboratory are making full use of the concept in the design and development of future spacecraft to reduce the substantial cost of direct simulation of physical products.

With the rise of the Internet of Things technology, the concept of Industry 4.0 has been put forward, and the continuous development of cloud computing, big data and other new generation of information technology provides guarantee for the expansion of the application range of digital twin. Manufacturing industry has become one of the main application scenarios of digital twin.

After uploading relevant data through the Internet of Things and edge computing, manufacturing enterprises can use digital twin technology to complete production, energy consumption, equipment, design, manufacturing management and other work, so as to achieve quality improvement, cost reduction, income generation and efficiency.

At present, digital twin solution integrators are mainly cloud manufacturers such as BAT and Huawei and the three major operators. By building the basic architecture of digital twin system, they provide visualization engines, access to industrial real-time data to restore production scenes, provide complete industrial digital twin services, and cooperate with remote operation and maintenance and visual management of industrial production.

However, only technical support is not enough for the application of digital twin in specific industries. The business scenarios and corresponding requirements of each industry are different, and the industry Know-how is the key to realize the implementation of digital twin. Only by combining industry data elements and constantly polishing the model can an accurate and intelligent business model be established.

Faw Hongqi Prosperity Factory is a smart factory for the automobile industry developed by Ali and the Ninth Design and Research Institute of China Machinery Industry. Relying on DTwin, the intelligent manufacturing platform of Ali Cloud Industrial brain, combined with the experience and data of the Ninth Design and Research Institute of China Machinery Industry in automotive plant planning, FAW Hongqi Boom factory mining business pain points, difficulties and values in the automobile production scene, completed the real-time collection, processing, storage, alarm and control of millions of data points in the five workshops. Ensure the safety and stability of factory production, improve product quality, reduce energy consumption costs.

In addition, the application of digital twin technology used to be only developed by large groups in aerospace, automobile, shipbuilding and other industries with the ability and funds, but with the progress of technology and the reduction of development costs, the application of digital twin in traditional small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises is also accelerating penetration.

“Based on the strong industry knowledge of the leading enterprises, combined with digital twin technology, to create a series of replicable and promotable industry-level digital twin applications, is our original intention to deeply cultivate the field of industry-level digital twin.” Brickaid Zhilian said in an interview with China Business News. Brick Zhuizhilian is a digital technology company incubated by Southeast Digital Economic Development Research Institute focusing on industrial digital services.

In view of the problems of “difficult transformation, high cost and slow effect” faced by small and medium-sized enterprises in Quzhou special paper industry in the process of digital transformation, Brickaid Zhilian serves special paper head enterprise Xianxhe Stock and daily paper head enterprise Weida Zhejiang, and constructs digital workshops and future factories respectively in the head of paper industry by using the advanced nature of digital twin technology. At the same time, we cooperate with Longyou County Bureau of Economy and Information Technology to build “Longyou Paper Industry Center”, based on “8+X” industry grade lightweight digital transformation, help more than 10 paper enterprises in the county to provide and complete digital transformation services, and help the local traditional paper industry digital transformation.

“For digital twinning to accelerate in manufacturing, it needs to really deliver real value to businesses across multiple scenarios.” Taking a head customer served by Brick Zhilian as an example, the production virtual simulation technology can help enterprises reduce the training time of new employees by 50% and save nearly ten thousand yuan/person in training cost; the dynamic simulation of production line can help enterprises reduce the annual manufacturing cost loss of millions of yuan; the quality control simulation optimization can help enterprises reduce the cost loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan/line in quality.

With the continuous expansion of digital twin application scenarios in the future, related industry chain companies are expected to usher in rapid development. According to IDC statistics, at present, China’s simulation, visualization, interactive control, urban information model and other sectors are all “billion” market scale. In 2021, the revenue growth rate of relevant enterprises in digital twin solutions is generally over 50%, and the overall market is expected to maintain a good growth trend in 2022.以上翻译结果来自有道神经网络翻译（YNMT）· 通用场景