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Digital twins: a critical tool

As a sidebar to Automation World's August cover story on optimizing power consumption in a plant, this article explores a key trend: creating a digital twin of production equipment fueled by real-time data to have a simulated environment in which to experiment with different control strategies for energy consumption.

Digital twins allow companies to test new designs on a dynamic simulation.
Digital twins allow companies to test new designs on a dynamic simulation.

As a virtualized representation of production equipment in a factory, digital twins play a key role in helping manufacturers model different scenarios to optimize energy efficiency, among other objectives. The twin can contain a massive amount of data about existing machines, down to the component level, according to Andy Garrido, product market specialist for Beckhoff Automation.

“Once you have that information online, you can connect some inputs in the field and see what happens as far as developing failures and energy consumption,” Garrido says. “The amount of data required to populate a digital twin is absolutely enormous.”

The real-time data comes from a variety of different sources covering such metrics as vibration, frequency analysis, gear box monitoring, temperature, power and velocity monitoring. Beckhoff systems can obtain this information from every machine and across the plant, Garrido adds. But you have to have the data before you can optimize it.

Emerson recently completed a project for a large petrochemical company in which it implemented a digital twin of its control system with a dynamic simulation of the process to improve the operation of its steam plant. The company generates steam, which it then supplies to more than a dozen entities. Energy efficiency and steam supply were paramount.

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