Moving Digital Twin from Pilot to Core Capability – Podcast Transcript
Mounting complexity, disruption and shifting customer demands are driving companies in many industries to seek faster and more efficient development methods across product and production lifecycles.
In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens, we are joined by one of our resident experts on the Digital Twin, Dominik Zettler, Vice President of Simulation for Industrial Systems at Siemens. The conversation explores the digital twin concept before examining common challenges and practical advice on how to get started on a digital transformation journey.
Check out the podcast and read the transcript below!
00:00:12 Conor Peick
Welcome to the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens. My name is Conor Peick and I’m a marketing writer at Siemens, as well as one of a few hosts that you will find on the Future Ready Podcast feed. In this episode, you’re going to hear the first part of a conversation that I had with Dominik Zettler, Vice President of Simulation for Industrial Systems at Siemens, who will also serve as one of our key voices on the Digital Twin here on the Future Ready Podcast feed. Over more than 20 years in the industry, Dominik has experienced the growth of digitalization technology from early 3D modeling as a user to the advanced Digital Twins in use today. Dominik and I are going to explore the Digital Twin concept before examining why companies sometimes struggle with adopting new technologies such as the Digital Twin. We will then discuss some practical advice Dominik shares with customers on how they can get started on a digital transformation journey. Thanks so much for listening and we hope that you enjoy the show. So Dominik, why don’t you just briefly introduce yourself for the listeners and also maybe you could tell us what excites you the most about the Digital Twin and digitalization technology more broadly?
00:01:13 Dominik Zettler
First of all, hello to all the listeners here. And my name is Dominik, like you’re here already and maybe you read already. And my journey with this whole topic started basically in the end of the 90s already where I did an apprenticeship for a tracer. What is a tracer? It’s a technical designer for machinery and so on. So I’m started my career on the user side. I grew up in the lake of Constance where we have a lot of machine builder delivering into automotive. And with this topic, I grew up with 3D already in the 2000s and was addicted to all the things. I developed myself to a general contracting project manager, so the whole things get bigger and more holistic. And the whole topic— which capabilities do we have in the digital world— I was always addicted to. And so the last 25 years, it was always a development of myself into this new digitalization capabilities. And now we are talking today about Digital Twins, comprehensive Digital Twins, industrial metaverse, Digital Twin composer and other stuff. And I really like to talk with all of you and with you together about the things and make it tangible what we are in.
00:02:30 Conor Peick
No, that’s excellent. And so I love that you ended that with how do we make it tangible for the listeners, right? And so I think the next question that I would have is, do you think you could maybe explain in a nutshell what we mean exactly when we talk about a Digital Twin? And then in addition to that, what distinguishes a comprehensive Digital Twin from maybe some more preliminary applications?
00:02:58 Dominik Zettler
Let’s start with the Digital Twin exactly as a single wording. Digital twin is basically a representation in the virtual world of a physical asset from the real world—it’s a twin. For me, it’s also important: digital and twin, we need to reflect both worlds of a single topic—a Digital Twin of a motor, Digital Twin of one thing, or whatever. And you said also comprehensive Digital Twin: comprehensive Digital Twin is basically then if we combine those different Digital Twins and make also approach to ensure that the consistency of the single Digital Twins could be assembled—and this also through the life cycle. And this leads us also to the concept that we say we build up a comprehensive Digital Twin and basically in the end we’re talking about an industrial metaverse. So to put it into a nutshell again: Digital Twin is basically one clear single closed topic. Comprehensive Digital Twin is if I combine more different disciplines of different Digital Twins into more holistic setup and a second topic into a life cycle. And then we’re talking about a comprehensive Digital Twin because I can interact with it on different spots. And basically it will then end up in an industrial metaverse—or could end up in an industrial metaverse.
00:04:30 Conor Peick
And one thing that I’d noticed you mentioned in there is this concept of the life cycle, right—and across the life cycle. And one thing that I think we sometimes almost forget is that there is a whole production side of the Digital Twin. I believe this is sort of your area of expertise as the production side. You mentioned that you started your journey working for a machine builder, I believe. So what opportunities does the Digital Twin open up to make production processes more efficient and more sustainable? What sort of advantages can it deliver on that production side?
00:05:03 Dominik Zettler
No, perfect topic. I say exactly: we do need also to distinguish we have Digital Twins more on the product side—that we have a Digital Twin of a tire, a car, a plane, ship or whatever it is—and exactly bring it to production. In production, we are talking about a Digital Twin of an asset—a motor, a sensor or whatever—or a process, or a machine, or a line, or the whole plant. And this exactly includes also more different disciplines because if we look as an example for a machine: a machine—we have mechanical behavior, we have physics, but we have also drives and drivetrains, we have sensors and actors, they react on things, maybe also light curtains for safety topics. And all these different disciplines need to be bundled together that we have then in the end a Digital Twin—and then through the lifecycle, a comprehensive Digital Twin of the machine or the line. And this is also a little bit difference between if we talk about a product and a production: in a product, I can utilize Digital Twins early in the design phase; we can also use it in different phases. But the origin, it’s a little bit different because in the production I use it then through the whole life cycle with different ingredients and possibilities and capabilities of different simulation tools and make it then in the end comprehensive.
00:06:29 Dominik Zettler
And for sure, if we have then the production Digital Twin, machine Digital Twin, and product Digital Twin, next iteration is for sure: with this product Digital Twin, we can then bring it together with the production Digital Twin and so on. And then we have even more comprehensive, more holistic Digital Twin. So there are different levels, different steps we can go in this whole journey of Digital Twins.
00:06:55 Conor Peick
I’m wondering how the kind of handoff between product teams and production teams has kind of evolved in recent years. In your experience, has that handoff been maybe a little more difficult in the past and does some of the advancements of the Digital Twin make that a little bit smoother? Yeah, I guess I’m wondering what is that interaction between the product and the production Digital Twin—what does that look like?
00:07:22 Dominik Zettler
Great topic. I said when I started 25 years back—even a little bit more, but then the people would note how old I am—it was quite sequential, and project lead times to build up a new plant has been one and a half, two years in automotive, from topics including car design, maybe even four or five years—and was quite sequential. With Digital Twins, we can have early stage products already and start in parallel already with first layouting, engineering, bill of process, bill of material in parallel and so on. So the whole lead time from idea of a product until start of production was maybe in the past—automotive 2000s—maybe five years. Today, maybe we’re talking about three years. So it’s just… but it’s 25 years—we had time to improve it through the whole time. And this brings also the next level: from my point of view, also what I see in the market, we still have potentials to even more paralyze topics. If we bring disciplines even closer in parallel engineering phases and so on, you can even be quicker than as of today.
00:08:44 Conor Peick
No, that’s really… I mean, it’s fascinating that, as you mentioned, it’s been 25 years, but I think the compression of a vehicle design from five years down to three years—that seems like an immense achievement to me. Someone who’s not worked as an engineer before.
00:09:00 Dominik Zettler
No, exactly—but it’s not only the engineering of the car; it’s including the production facility and the production machines and lines. And exactly, I said this: you need to take the whole—what we had in the past—really very sequential step by step, that then you go more in parallel because you have all the digital data. You can go for digital prototyping, rapid testing, whatever it is. And this brings a lot of capabilities and speed into the project to be much faster. By using the capabilities of these different Digital Twins on the different steps, you can really speed up your lead time from idea to start of production. We need to really consider the whole chain from product development until production of the product. And if we bring this together, this is the maximum time you can then talk about. And here’s still, from my point of view, the next year also still possibilities to be even quicker than as of today.
00:10:04 Conor Peick
It only makes it even more impressive when you frame it as it’s not just the design of the car, it goes all the way through the design of the production facility and getting through to producing the vehicle itself. I mean, yeah—hugely impressive. And I think that brings us really nicely onto the capabilities of the comprehensive Digital Twin. What we see through analyst reports and surveys and things, it shows that companies in the market do recognize the potential of the comprehensive Digital Twin. At the same time, there are other surveys that also demonstrate that many companies have yet to really adopt the technology. They see it as something they maybe want to adopt, but they are unsure maybe of how to get started. I’m just curious: what do you think is maybe holding some of these companies back from taking that leap into digital transformation?
00:10:58 Dominik Zettler
I meet often customers—they are afraid of it because if you really start with the big picture, maybe you start even with metaverse or comprehensive Digital Twin, it looks massive. They are quite often very afraid and say, “where do I need to start?” And basically, this is also the trick: think big, but start small. Very often they are overwhelmed and they have no clue where to start because they see the big picture and they have no idea where to tackle and where they have the quick wins—where are the low hanging fruits, where they can get in. This is one topic and also the entry barrier. I said this also started the last year to change a little bit. There are also different things: first of all, we need to have the right labor to do it. Maybe you need to employ new colleagues who are capable to handle all this stuff, maybe set up a new IT department for the staff, changing their processes. So there are a lot of things which have nothing to do with technology—they are basically more in this topic: change management. Classical change management to say, where do I start with the right low hanging fruits to make the right progress, to make my transformation.
00:12:22 Dominik Zettler
Because for each and every company—like I said—25 years is the whole time, what my experience is now in this arena. It’s a journey. You can’t—if you would stay in industry 3.0 and you want to do a frog jump—it is nearly impossible. You need to do it as a journey. Digitalization, Digital Twins, comprehensive Digital Twins is a journey. And this I can only always repeat and repeat again: think big, but start small.
00:12:58 Conor Peick
That is such an excellent framing for the problem. There’s the idea around how you develop skills as a person, where it’s just look to get like 1% better every day at something that you’re working on—whether it’s learning an instrument or whatever. That almost feels like it kind of applies here.
00:13:18 Dominik Zettler
Absolutely—and if you start, then you will figure out maybe some topics that you’ve not thought about before. Because I’m explaining maybe the capabilities, but if you do it by yourself, maybe you discover something that was not even in my mind. This is also important: starting, have the right use case, go in with one Digital Twin, and then you have the possibility—multi-directions to scale and to go for your digital transformation journey and really aiming for comprehensive Digital Twins left and right, up and down. That’s from my point of view today, and if I look to the future, we will have plenty of options what is possible.
00:14:20 Conor Peick
Thanks again for joining us on the Future Ready Podcast. There’s more to come from my conversation with Dominik, and not to mention future episodes featuring Dominik in conversation with other experts from Siemens and beyond, exploring the future of the comprehensive Digital Twin and other technologies. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, I encourage you to subscribe to the feed, as we will have many more conversations with experts from various backgrounds, diving into the most important trends and technologies in industry today. So thanks once again for listening, and we hope that you’ll join us again soon.
Siemens Digital Industries Software helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Siemens’ software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn today’s ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries. Siemens Digital Industries Software – Accelerating transformation.
