Digital twinning explained

The fourth wave in industry, known as Industry 4.0, is underway connecting the physical world to the digital. To bring these together, manufacturers are developing smarter, better-connected machines that use big data, machine-to-machine communication and machine-learning technology to optimise productivity. Digital twinning, the mapping of a physical asset to a digital platform, is one of the latest technologies to emerge from Industry 4.0. It uses data from sensors on the physical asset to analyse its efficiency, condition and real-time status. Up to 85 per cent of internet of things platforms will contain some form of this by 2020, according to Orbis Research.