Digital twin enables and promotes remote working: Nisheeth Srivastava, Capgemini

Nisheeth Srivastava, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Capgemini India talks about the solutions that the company offers for digital twin, and the future of the technology in the country.

What are the solutions you offer for a digital twin?

We have a solution with Nextgen AR/VR platform that digitises the maintenance, repair and operations activities using cutting-edge technologies for smart authoring, advanced planning and simulation, AR/VR/Digital Twin and AI. This solution is currently being explored in the aftersales value chain with a few of our clients in a large aerospace and manufacturing space. In such industries the products are complex, due to which maintenance is challenging as it requires high precision. With a digital twin, field technicians can move towards paperless operations, i.e., from text-based complex maintenance procedures to VR-based training content and AR-based assistance.

How can India build a resilient supply chain by digitisation?

One of the biggest challenges faced in building a resilient supply chain is that the information is highly decentralised, residing in non-standard formats. The process of data collation, conversion, communicationand collaboration becomes tedious and time-taking. So, industries are reconfiguring their supply chains and infusing latest technologies like digitisation within their framework of supply chain management to achieve resiliency.

Digitisation can play a major role as it can help standardise data and make it available securely and timely for use by supply chain management stakeholders. With this in mind, we have developed AI-based robotic process automation (RPA) solution to enable faster digitisation process and build a resilient and reliable supply chain.

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

To develop a digital twin model, we require access to real-time asset attributes and operating parameters. That is one of the reasons why digital twin applications are playing crucial role in the development of IoT technology. Development of digital twin application requires elaborate use of IoT-based sensors for measuring the physical and electro-mechanical parameters of industrial assets.

It also requires a robust communication infrastructure for transmitting IoT data of assets to remote storage systems for archiving, retrieval, processing, modelling and analytics. Digital twin is a highly data-driven application, and as a result, catalysing the development of IoT technology.

What organisational challenges do you see in India? How will digital twin help identify those issues?

The major challenges are loss of sales and production due to lockdowns and restrictions, manpower and capacity issues, and so on. The major technological disruptions faced by these industries are digitalisation, shared vehicles, autonomous vehicles, automated factories, and intelligent industries among others.

The digital twin enables real-time remote monitoring of what’s happening with the physical asset. This will also promote remote working. In order to cope with the pandemic-induced disruptions and also keep pace with disruptive innovations in parallel, it is important for organisations to be agile and build state-of-the-art products that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and organised.

The digital twin will enable them to design better with real-time operational insights, better manufacturing via continuous learning and feedback, better operations via informed service and support, and accelerated risk assessment. It can help optimise the cost in development, reducing the number of prototypes that are to be manufactured, and encourages paperless operations to aid the environment.

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

AI and data analytics are increasingly being used for digital twin applications, especially in automotive, utility, and industrial environments. Digital twins can start by replicating a simple product digitally and extend to replicate an entire industry along with several processes associated with the value chain. By connecting the digital and the physical product with help of sensors and technology, a digital twin can help in providing the real-time operational insights of the physical product or process. The digital twin coupled with technologies like AI, ML, data mining, AR/VR, and IoT can boost the adoption of Industry 4.0 to transform manufacturing.