Digital Twins: 6 Technical Hurdles and How to Overcome Them with IIoT

What Technical Hurdles Must You Overcome with Digital Twins?

Imagine being able to observe, optimise, and simulate your entire production in real time – without making a single manual adjustment to the machine. Sounds like a thing of the future? This is precisely where the digital twin comes in. But while this technology offers enormous potential, many companies face challenges: How do you integrate existing equipment? How do you handle vast amounts of data? In this article, you'll learn what hurdles exist and how Clouver can pave the way, especially for medium-sized companies.

Challenges in Integrating Digital Twins into Existing Systems

Implementing digital twins in your production environment isn't automatic. A key factor is integration into a heterogeneous machine landscape. Often, you'll find equipment from different technological generations on the shop floor – modern machines working hand in hand with older systems. This leads to the following technical challenges:

• Heterogeneous machine landscape: Different lifecycles of IT systems and equipment make smooth data exchange difficult.
• Lack of connectivity: Many older machines don't support Ethernet-based communication protocols. While they provide sensor data, this often remains isolated.
• Data extraction problems: Insufficient networking on the shop floor prevents a continuous and reliable data flow.

The solution lies in using modern Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platforms. Clouver offers innovative interfaces here – with the Clouver SmartKit, you can integrate even older equipment into your networked system and create the necessary data foundation for digital applications.

Data Quality and Volume: A Key to Success

Digital applications are only as good as the data they're based on. Incomplete or faulty sensor data often presents a significant obstacle:

• Incomplete data: Gaps or inaccuracies in sensor data can significantly impair simulations and optimisation approaches.
• Lack of synchronisation: Continuous data exchange must be ensured between physical equipment and their digital representations.
• High data volumes: Real-time processing of large amounts of production data places high demands on your IT infrastructure.

Clouver supports you through real-time data access via clear dashboards – giving you precise and up-to-date information for informed decisions at all times.

Modelling Complexity and Level of Detail

Another critical point is modelling. Here, it's about finding the optimal level of detail:

• Overly complex models: These can unnecessarily tie up resources and slow down response times.
• Overly simple models: They may not provide all the important information for precise simulations.
• Dynamic processes: Real-time modelling of changing process parameters requires continuous adjustments.

A stepwise and modular modelling approach, as enabled by Clouver, ensures that you start with simpler representations and refine them successively.

Integration into Existing IT Infrastructures

Besides the technical aspects of machine integration, there are also significant hurdles on the IT side:

• Interoperability: Your existing systems must work seamlessly with new digital solutions.
• Security aspects: Data from your production is sensitive – protecting this data must be the highest priority.
• Scalability: From pilot project to company-wide deployment, it's important that your system is flexible and expandable.

Modern IIoT platforms act as a connecting element here. Clouver brings together different systems and offers you uniform interfaces for your production data.

Organisational Challenges and Internal Acceptance

Not only technical but also organisational challenges can jeopardise the success of digital applications:

• Authorisation problems: Missing permission structures can lead to important information not being used.
• Qualification gaps: If the necessary expertise isn't sufficiently available in the company, innovative approaches remain unused.
• IT restrictions: Slow internet connections, complex firewalls, and insufficient IT capacities present considerable hurdles.

With Clouver, you get a system that easily integrates into existing structures. Thanks to the modular design and intuitive order management, you quickly see successes that promote internal acceptance.

How Clouver Overcomes the Challenges

The integration of various data sources, real-time synchronisation, and flexible system architectures are crucial – this is exactly where Clouver comes into play:

• The Clouver SmartKit enables you to seamlessly integrate older and heterogeneous machines into your IIoT network.
• The intuitive dashboards give you insight into the real-time data of your production at any time.
• The modular structure of the platform allows you to select exactly the components that meet your current requirements.
• With Clouver Paperless, you optimise access to order data and reduce downtime.

Clouver creates the technological foundation to bridge the gap between physical production processes and their digital representations. You benefit from improved transparency, optimised processes, and data-based decisions – essential factors for Industry 5.0.

Summary

Implementing digital solutions offers you enormous opportunities to make your production processes more efficient. But note the challenges: From integrating heterogeneous equipment to ensuring meaningful real-time data to organisational barriers.

Modern IIoT platforms like Clouver provide practical solutions for this. With features such as the SmartKit, intuitive dashboards, and paperless order management, you ensure that your system is flexible, scalable, and future-proof.