Operational Digital Twin: How data contextualization provides a complete, actionable understanding of industrial operations
INTRODUCTION A digital twin can be one of the most useful, insightful tools to drive industrial innovation. While the digital twin concept is no longer new, the capacity of the term continues to expand based on technological advancement, particularly in the realm of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Over time, digital twins have morphed to meet the practical needs of users. In oil and gas, for example, the possibilities of condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance have amplified the need for a digital representation of both the past and present condition of an object or system. Gartner predicts that “by 2023, 33% of owner-operators of homogeneous composite assets will create their own digital twins, up from less than 5% in 2018” while “at least 50% of OEMs’ mass-produced industrial and commercial assets will directly integrate supplier product sensor data into their o