The digital twin can be tailored and graphically represented in relevant formats for a variety of functions, like monitoring, manufacturing, production and maintenance. By leveraging real-time information from both the product and asset intelligence systems, you’ve created a dynamic, responsive and predictive product that is fully optimized to deliver the benefits to your business you’re in search of.

Product lifecycles are getting shorter and stakeholder expectations–from customers to stock holders–have never been higher. Digital Twins address this paradox. Manufacturing executives can design, calibrate and test intelligent assets, identify process areas for improvement and predict maintenance issues before they happen, ultimately increasing service levels for customers.

The Internet of Things is a crucial component for a Digital Twin strategy and an area where we’re seeing unprecedented advancements. Gartner forecasts that over 8 billion connected things will be implemented in 2017, reaching well over 20 billion by 2020. This growth is a powerful engine that could result in billions saved in maintenance, operations and value generation if leveraged effectively as a part of a comprehensive Digital Twins ecosystem strategy–and many global companies have taken notice. The most notable innovations are advanced IoT sensors embedded in products and assets that monitoring and transmit environmental, operational and structural dynamic information in real time.

All of this is to say that there’s tremendous value that can be generated by embracing a Digital Twins approach to process optimization and innovation and new advancements in IoT and machine learning are unlocking greater opportunities for businesses to experiment in this arena. The approach naturally lends itself to collaboration within enterprise and even extends throughout extended networks. The Digital Twins serve as the digital thread of proof, allowing businesses to connect processes through the entire product lifecycle, ultimately allowing the real-time exchange of information to develop new products, optimize maintenance and introduce new serves and business models.