Myth Busters Series: Digital Twin

We are currently in the middle of a blog series where we are busting myths about construction technology. Last week, we looked at if the construction industry is truly a technology laggard. Today, let’s turn our attention specifically to digital twins.

Hexagon recently released new insights in its the Digital Twin Industry Report, where it questioned 660 C-level executives about the adoption digital twin technology. Here it debunked several digital twin myths with real data to support many of its claims. Let’s take a look at just a few of them now.

Myth #1: Digital Twins Will Replace Us All

False. The data here shows us that while many say their digital twins can make at least some decisions previously made by humans, a greater percentage (59%) say they are informing human decision-makers. We see here humans are still key to decision-making—and likely will remain essential for quite some time. Digital twins simply empower better decision-making with deeper insights.

Like all good technology implementations, it augments people’s ability to do their jobs. Will digital twins replace some jobs? Possibly. Will it augment and require the evolution of some jobs? Definitely. Will it replace us all? Probably not. Certainly, we can expect our jobs to evolve with the rise of digital twins.

Myth #2: Digital Twin Implementation Will Overrun on Costs

Maybe, but if your company proceeds with digital twin carefully, this concern can be mitigated, at least according to the data in this report. When it came to the challenges of implementation, cost overruns were way down the list across all sectors, ranking eighth as the most common challenge. Some sectors are proving particularly good at cost control such as oil and gas, public safety, and mining.

For industries such as city planning and construction that do report slightly higher cost overruns, it is a problem cited by less than a third of respondents. So, we see here cost overruns are something to keep in mind as you proceed forward with digital twin, but it is not an inevitable result.

Myth #3: Digital Twins Are Only for Equipment

There is this unspoken idea that digital twins are only for things like an aircraft engine or wind turbine. Sure, those are great case studies! There is absolutely great value in predictive maintenance. But the reality is we are beginning to move beyond the early days of digital twins, and we are beginning to see many different types of applications.

Of course, in construction, we can create a digital twin of a building or an asset. This report points to many different examples such as creating a digital twin for an entire supply chain, production line, or quality control system. But we can also create a digital twin for things like safety where crowd management needs to be managed.

These are just a few myths we have seen busted in this report. What are you seeing? What myths have you heard surrounding digital twins? Do they seem true, false, or somewhere in between?

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