Education for Industry 4.0 is not where it needs to be. Schools and career training programs for advanced manufacturing and process management focus on traditional siloed skills and new technologies permeating change in manufacturing worldwide are not being addressed sufficiently. Digital Twinning is one of those new technologies that needs to be added to advanced manufacturing training.
A digital twin refers to a live digital representation of an industrial process. Digital twinning technology is used to design systems, to predict how a process will perform, or to monitor and change a process in real time. Other use cases like employee training, process optimization and fault evaluation add additional value.
Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing position digital twinning as an important and central technology in the new era of manufacturing and process management. With the availability of more powerful computing, the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing, digital twin technology has become cost-effective to implement. A digital twin is an integration of Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), internet of things (IoT), SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), and VR / AR.
By integrating the design components, actual process data, big data, with digital simulation and visualization, companies can recreate existing or new processes and analyze their behavior. Online, this is a tool to design, implement, operate, monitor, maintain, optimize, and change a process while it is live. Offline, this adds the ability to experiment with changes, reconfigure, and fault check a process before making changes to a live system.
For the workforce in manufacturing, digital twinning is a game-changer. As a design and planning tool the digital twin creates a realistic simulation that an engineer can use to evaluate operation or changes before deployment. During operation, the digital twin offers remote access to real time information and visibility to the operators.
Digital twins also enable a new level of visibility for training and maintenance. Technicians can see historic and predictive data for components, can access visual descriptions, maintenance procedures, and documentation of a system as they learn about and operate the process in real time.
Advanced manufacturing training programs in schools and for continuing education need to skill up and integrate digital twinning so that workers on all levels are familiar and can learn the benefits of cloud-based tools, digital analysis, and predictive analytics. Digital twinning training is part of any education program for Industry 4.0
Intelitek is a provider of career and technology training for advanced manufacturing for educators worldwide. Intelitek’s Industry 4.0 program is a blueprint for advanced manufacturing training and includes curriculum, labs, and educator resources to enable schools and businesses to train their students in all aspects of manufacturing and Industry 4.0.
For more information about Industry 4.0 training programs click here
