Digital twin breaks barriers, enables digital continuity: Kiran Divekar, Dassault Systèmes India

Kiran Divekar, director, manufacturing applications, Dassault Systèmes India gave unique insights into the digital twin technology in a conversation with Dataquest.

What are the solutions you are offering for a digital twin?

A digital twin can be any element that comes in. It allows you to do unlimited iterations, provides insights of how your production is going on, how the human element can be improved, etc. There is also the integration with the PLCs and knowledge retention. Dassault offers the 3DExperience platform.

3DExperience provides a real-time view of business activity and ecosystem, connecting people, ideas, and data in a single collaborative environment that empowers businesses and people to innovate in entirely new ways.

You can build a virtual factory, starting from scanning the factory, building it ground up, etc. You can simulate different what-ifs of your lines, stations, etc. to a level of detail where you have sensors and IoT-related stuff that can be modeled and simulated virtually. We offer V+R, that is, virtual plus real, for digital twin. There are solutions for the real world and the virtual world.

There are companies in India who are using our solutions, for example, Thermax. They are using the Delmia digital manufacturing solution. Globally, one of the biggest customers is Airbus Helicopters. They have employed us for their digital twin and shopfloor virtualisation. Dassault Systèmes was chosen by Alstom to deliver customised trains to Trenitalia. In automotive, there is Scania, which makes buses and trucks out of Europe.

How can India build a resilient supply chain by digitisation?

The supply chain has a huge role to play in manufacturing and production activities. OEMs are outsourcing more work to the supply chain. There is a need for the supply chain in India to be resilient. Digitalisation will have a big role to play, and there is a strong need for digitalisation within India. Dassault Systèmes has a solution for the supply chain. We provide optional accelerators for the MSME segment so that they can quickly ramp up and start executing their production.

They have to ensure that best practices are followed on the shop floor. Here, 3DExperience and Delmia have a role to play. They enable the supply chain to digitalise and standardise their processes, synchronise, etc.

What organisational challenges do you see in India? How will digital twin play a role to identify those issues?

There are organisational challenges. There are lots of de-separated companies. A company may have many departments. But all of these companies are working in silos. Information hardly goes down to the shop floor. We still find people on the shopfloor using 2D drawings. They have not yet embarked on the 3D journey.

This is a big organisational challenge. This is a challenge all over the world. Advanced countries like Japan, the USA, Germany, and France have started this journey to break barriers. However, these challenges remain in pockets, even in advanced countries.

Digital twin plays a role in breaking barriers. They enable digital continuity. CATIA is the world’s engineering and design leading software for product 3D CAD design excellence from Dassault. The same data can flow to the shop floor, manufacturing teams, and even to service engineers. There is a seamless continuity of data.

Will the implementation of AI and data analytics in digital twin enable more insights?

Implementation of AI and data analytics will help gain more insights. Today, all machines are smart. We need to make sense of the data. Here, AI and ML have a big role to play. Companies can take in huge volumes of structured and unstructured data. We can do the data mining and give some meaningful results.

How is digital twin crucial to the development of IoT technology?

We can enable getting the data from all the machines. Factories are getting more advanced. We can gather data from the sensors. This data can be used for further development. Cloud is another integral part and gaining prominence. We have our data center. Solutions are also available on the cloud.