In today's digital-led business landscape, the importance of digital twins in operational strategy has reached unprecedented levels. Gartner, a respected global research firm, highlights how digital twins revolutionize operations. By creating virtual copies of physical systems or processes, digital twins offer a flexible platform to replicate and improve real-world situations. Combining Gartner's knowledge with VSOptima's practical experience, this article will give you a step-by-step plan over 8-9 weeks to use digital twins in business operations.
Opportunity Qualification and Initial Assessment
Objective: Understand whether the specific business problem can be solved using the process digital twin technology.
Activities:
Organize a 2 hours workshop to uncover pivotal insights:
- Understand the process's high-level structure and critical junctures.
- Identify KPIs, contemporary challenges, and source systems.
- High-level map process map and list of systems.
- Establish use cases, objectives, and prospective business impacts.
- Evaluate technological solutions.
Outcome: A clear insight into how well the business issue aligns with the digital twin approach.
Implementation Planning
Objective: Draft a strategic roadmap, considering the complexity and current status of the selected process.
Activities:
- Adopt a minimum viable product approach: Emphasize immediate returns and stage-wise augmentation of digital twin investments.
- Joint review of the opportunity with VSOptima and the client.
- Attain alignment on core objectives, scope, and timeline.
- Review relevant artifacts and gather key data snapshots.
- Incorporate governance from the get-go: Use solid digital twin governance approaches that address software changes, security, and overall lifecycle management.
Outcome: A well-rounded implementation plan, benchmarked for success.
Business Case Analysis
Objective: Conduct an in-depth analysis of the process destined for digital twin transformation.
Activities:
- Engage key stakeholders and process owners, participants, etc.
- Evaluate existing data and identify potential data integration avenues.
Collect process data, run process mining and statistical analysis to capture the dynamics of the steps, queues, and resources/systems involved - Blueprint the model's integration architecture
Outcome: the process model and the process data.
Modeling & Calibration
Objective: Design a simulation model and refine it using historical data.
Activities:
- Enrich the process model with the collected data required for simulation.
- Calibrate the model simulation drawing from past records.
- Adjust model variables to reduce calibration discrepancies.
Outcome: A meticulously calibrated process simulation model.
Model Integration
Objective: Seamlessly integrate the devised model with the company's data landscape.
Activities:
- Implement ETL and data transformation required for continuous data flow between the model and source databases.
- Maximize digital twin returns by blending them with business applications when needed.
Outcome: A fully-fledged digital twin of the process.
Operationalization
Objective: Establish the digital twin as a central tool for ongoing process improvement
Activities:
- Introduce the client team to the digital twin model.
- Roll out the digital twin across the organization running the twinned process.
- Configure SLAs for anomaly tracking and design predictive strategies.
Outcome: A robust and responsive digital twin, equipped to deliver actionable insights and predictions.
To wrap up, this elaborated 8-week roadmap harmoniously integrates Gartner's industry wisdom with VSOptima's hands-on expertise, furnishing businesses with a gold-standard blueprint for process digital twin implementation. By adhering to this guide, companies can ensure their digital twin undertakings are aligned with business objectives and poised for tangible impact.
Reach out to us if you have any questions on the process digital twin implementation or want to explore VSOptima platform. Schedule a call today!