It wasn’t that long ago that digital twins were the exclusive domain of the largest organizations with the most flexible budgets. 

Today, developing a digital twin no longer requires a ‘blank check’ and endless patience. Advances in low-code development mean that digital twins can now be implemented much faster and at far lower cost – especially when they are guided by an experienced partner.

In this blog, we examine the transformative role of digital twins in the warehouse and logistics sector. But it is good to stress that the benefits of this technology are also applicable to other sectors too. 

Industries like manufacturing, healthcare, government, automotive, and aerospace can all gain a great deal by modeling and optimizing their operations with a digital twin.

So, let’s see exactly what these benefits are, and how your organization can get the maximum value with minimum risk.

Visualizing your path to greater productivity

Digital twins are full digital versions of your real-world assets, processes, and conditions. By ingesting data from sensors or third-party sources, a digital twin can track and simulate an entire facility or complex process in real time.

This is invaluable for mapping out the movement of physical assets and personnel, and measuring performance of hardware and processes. In most cases, these are rendered with a 3D visual representation, allowing decision-makers to gain a total overview and zoom-into the granular details.

By combining a variety of technologies, including machine learning (ML) algorithms, advanced analytics, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), you can also model the outcome for a variety of different scenarios.

When decision makers can visualize multiple scenarios in a full digital version of a physical infrastructure, they can see the outcome of each possible decision before committing it. This greatly improves the effectiveness of data-led decisions.

You can even use an AI-powered digital twin to autonomously run highly complex operations. This is highly complementary to the rise in automation in warehouse and logistics settings.

Already, some 4 million robots are at work in 50.000 warehouses worldwide. With fewer human eyes and more automation on the factory floor, a digital twin makes a highly effective way to guide and optimize your operations. It can also generate many other improvements.

How digital twins generate real-world benefits

The benefits are very real; organizations using digital twins reduce operational costs by 13% on average, and this is in addition to improvements in product quality, worker safety, and waste reduction.

Digital twins generate value approximately in proportion to the facility being simulated. For large, multinational organizations this can translate to millions of dollars in cost savings and other benefits each year.

However, medium-sized and growing businesses can also gain significant advantages which are proportional to the size of their organization and its facilities.

These include:

Operational efficiency – Dive deep into your processes, and uncover new ways to work better, faster, and more productively.

Predictive maintenance – Performance analytics can predict and plan maintenance needs before they can become a disruption. This means less downtime and lower costs.

Improved planning – Forecasting that uses both historical data, third-party data, and real-time insights can help anticipate demands more accurately.

Optimized layout – Reimagine your warehouse space with digital twin simulations that show the effects of different configurations, and how each one impacts processes.

Inventory management – Track inventory from cradle to grave. Identify chronic issues like overstocking, theft, or spatial constraints, and analyze knock-on effects to efficiency and costs.

Efficient routes – Orchestrate movement through your warehouse like a well-rehearsed ballet. Reduce congestion, maximize availability and utilization rates of hardware (like forklifts), and reduce handling time.

Enhanced customer offerings – Increased efficiency means products reach the customer in less time. Manufacturers can accommodate bespoke, made-to-order items, using more agile and dynamic production techniques enhanced by digital twins and AI.

Provisioning – Materials, space, hardware, and other resources are much easier to provision, and this can be done in synergy with other processes.

Safety – Simulate disruptive events (like racking collapse, accidental collision, or fire) and find ways to mitigate the effects. See how current measures work, and implement better solutions that are safer.

Energy efficiency and sustainability – Simulate your facility down to the last lightbulb. Real-time analytics give insights over energy and resource usage, and uncover new ways to make your facility more efficient. Hard data helps uncover sources of waste, measure carbon footprint, and makes sustainability reporting easier and more accurate.

This last point is especially relevant, as digital twins can help all kinds of organizations to discover sources of waste and find new solutions. For example, they can create automations that trigger specific actions based on business rules, like: “if no one is present in area 5 then turn off the HVAC and lights in area 5”.

How to implement digital twins

Implementing digital twins may not be as hard as you imagine. Many organizations already have much of the underlying digital and physical infrastructure, such as IoT, sensors, robots, and industry software like Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) in place.

All that’s needed is some guidance from an experienced partner and the right low-code platform for building and integrating all the components, and binding them together intelligently with business rules.

Digital twins and advanced automation are not a domain that many people associate with low-code; indeed, most low-code platforms are not suitable for this kind of use-case.

USoft stands out in the market as a low-code platform that has been developed for highly complex use-cases and business rules. This makes it a powerful tool for implementing digital twins, especially in the hands of an experienced partner like Endava.

The key to success is an incremental, phased approach that focuses on solving your current challenges. This gives you the most rewards for the least risk, while also decreasing time-to-value.

Our partner Endava outlines 4 levels of digital twin implementation:

Level 1: Connected twin

This is a digital twin that’s connected to a single physical asset, using real-time data to mirror real-world processes. It gives you a 360-degree view of a warehouse, factory, or other facility. A connected twin can also include third-part data sources, including collaborative partners, supply chain data, weather services, market data, and more.

Using these you can generate insights with analytics tools and identify ways to optimize your real-world processes. This offers a high reward for low risk.

Level 2: Intelligent twin

Building on the above, an intelligent twin uses a combination of AI-powered insights and data-driven human decision-making. With an intelligent twin, you can use AI capabilities to accurately model processes and performance as they are and how they could be. Potential optimizations can be simulated before making changes. Predictive maintenance becomes possible; and, by feeding data back into ML algorithms, you can drive continuous improvement.

Level 3: Autonomous twin

There is a gradient to how autonomous your digital twin can become, based on what you’re comfortable with. At the lower end, AI can generate suggested actions based on predictive analytics and real-time data. As the accuracy of suggestions is validated over time, you can transition to full automation of operational processes and decision-making, using AI and ML. This gives human decision-makers more time to focus on strategy and value-added tasks.

Level 4: Clustered twin

A clustered twin brings together multiple autonomous twins into a single model, giving better understanding and control over your whole enterprise, worldwide. This allows you to orchestrate complex processes and gain new synergies across multiple facilities. With a clustered twin you can consolidate redundant processes, and coordinate actions across multiple facilities.

Why USoft gives a unique advantage with digital twins

Speed – Compared to traditional methods, software development is 10X faster with USoft. The platform allows much of the development process required for digital twins to be accelerated, without compromising on capabilities or performance.

Accuracy – By combining visual and model-driven approaches both technical and non-technical stakeholders can become active participants. With better alignment on business priorities, approaches, and objectives, projects can move forward confidently.

Agility – You can accommodate your evolving business needs without disruption. USoft offers superior interoperability, as it has been uniquely designed to maximize interoperability and seamless integration across complex physical and software ecosystems.  This ensures that your digital twin always reflects reality by integrating new data sources or other technologies into your stack.

Business rules management – The USoft platform includes Studio rules management. This allows you to define, manage, and enforce business logic seamlessly in software applications. By infusing your digital twin with business rules, you ensure it reflects the way you operate. You can create a digital twin of the decision making process that workers use on the floor, so the digital twin can accurately simulate outcomes.

Want to explore the possibilities of digital twins for your organization?

A digital twin powered by crystal clear business rules enables real-time responsiveness. This is important for supporting key capabilities like predictive maintenance and supply chain resilience, because you can specify things like contingency plans and performance requirements with simple language and use these to drive automated processes and decisions.

However, you may not need a fully autonomous digital twin just yet. Instead, your organization may gain significant advantages by starting with a connected twin or intelligent twin, and using this to gain greater insights and inform better approaches.

Want to discuss your situation further and see what’s possible? Take the next step: get in touch.