Open Asset Digital Twin Supports the Plant’s Lifecyle

Overview

Recently, several global energy and chemical leaders created a groundswell of support around the need for open and sustainable digital twins. Open to accommodate the variety of applications and business processes for design and build (D&B) and operate and maintain (O&M). Sustainable after handover for the long operate and maintain portion of a plant’s lifecycle. The implications for this new initiative reach far into the operating and business systems of industrial companies and their technology suppliers.

The recent ARC Forum provided an interactive session with Dow, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron to learn best practices and how open asset digital twins can deliver significant value through the entire asset lifecycle across design, construction through to operations and maintenance – while optimizing and automating associated business processes. The Open Asset Digital Twin working group aligned on:

• Initial framing of industry challenges, needs, and guiding opportunities.
• Unified need for open standard-based data interoperability across the asset lifecycle.
• A vision for a scalable, replicable, open, and sustainable digital twin.

Digital Twin for the Asset Lifecycle

A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical asset using a 3D model and/or math algorithms. Current plant digital twins enable collaboration among those using engineering data and documents during D&B including FEED, design, construction, and commissioning. The digital twin becomes the vehicle for continuous handover of engineering data and documentation to O&M. The key objective of an open asset digital twin is sustainability in O&M for the currently underserved asset management business needs.

Failure after Handover

Unfortunately, nearly all digital twins created during D&B decay and die after handover. These twins support the business processes for engineering, procurement, and construction of the asset during D&B. Unfortunately, these twins are not adaptable to the functions and business processes for the various asset management functions in O&M. Without enough added value for operations, the twins lose support and fade away.

Digital Twin Sustainability

A sustainable asset digital twin is open to allow for new applications required by O&M after handover. The twin can be extended to support reliability analysis, inspections, predictive maintenance, process optimization, energy management, and other plant specific needs.

Moving Toward Sustainable and Open Asset Digital Twins

Peter Reynolds, ARC Advisory Group, delivered the initial presentation in the forum session “Moving Towards Sustainable and Open Asset Digital Twins.” Gaps in the data and workflows across the asset lifecycle causes losses in productivity, quality, and sustainability. Reasons for these deficits include:

• Data silos
• Point solutions that are not scalable
• Disconnected dataflows with poor interoperability

• Limited standards

The Open Asset Digital Twin working group collaborates to overcome these limitations by guiding suppliers to provide software that is sustainable throughout a plant’s lifecycle including D&B, handover, and O&M.

Digital Twin Visualization

Michael Hotaling, ExxonMobil, made the case for an open digital twin with his presentation. Digital twins have been successful during a D&B project, but not sustainable after handover in operations.

Data is Central

Data makes a digital twin intelligent. An open system separates data from the software deployed for visualization and simulation models. The open system allows the visualization and simulation that worked during the project to be replaced by software that better fits the business processes after handover during the operation and maintain phase of the plant’s lifecycle.

Open for Multiple Use Cases

Today, nearly all digital twin implementations have a single use case and business benefit. An open digital twin supports multiple use cases and grows in maturity as use cases are added. Further maturity occurs as the use cases interact with each other providing compounding benefits. The digital twin moves beyond being a portal for information and becomes a means to manage existing business processes, create new ones, and optimize them.

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Keywords: Digital Twin, Asset Lifecycle, Design & Build, Operate & Maintain, ARC Advisory Group.