Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Twin

The Digital Twin is a concept that has gained a lot of popularity recently. Many analysts, vendors, and customers agree that it is poised for proliferation as its value is realized and recognized, specifically in industrial environments.

This book aims to enable you to build your first Digital Twin prototype or minimum viable Digital Twin. Before we start looking at the Digital Twin's technical aspects, it is essential to understand what a Digital Twin is, how it came to be, and the business value of Digital Twins. Also, what are the ideal prospects for Digital Twins, especially if you are just starting out?

The generic concepts, characteristics, and principles around Digital Twins will be described in this chapter without us focusing on any specific technology for Digital Twins. In later chapters, we will focus on the technical development of a sample Digital Twin to demonstrate how to create your first Digital Twin prototype. This chapter aims to provide you with a shared understanding of Digital Twins, their characteristics, and how they can be applied. This understanding will be used later in this book when you configure your first Digital Twin.

We will start by providing a brief history of the development of the Digital Twin concept, focusing specifically on the industrial application of Digital Twins. This historical overview will provide some insight into the intent of Digital Twins, as well as what the original thought leaders and creators had in mind when describing the first Digital Twins.

Following this, we will define the term Digital Twin, which we will be using throughout this book as the guiding reference for the twin you are about to create. There are various definitions out in the market, but we must have a shared understanding of what we refer to as a Digital Twin for this book. We will expand the definition so that it includes some of the characteristics that we see as required or optional.

We will also provide some examples of industry use cases and how these apply across the overall life cycle of the Digital Twin entity. These use cases will provide you with some ideas on applying Digital Twins to your specific environment or business. This will offer further insight into the value proposition of Digital Twins for different requirements. Finally, we will provide some initial guidance on identifying potential applications of Digital Twins in an industrial setting.

The rest of this book will focus on helping you build your first Digital Twin and will start with planning your Digital Twin, identifying the right candidate for your first Digital Twin, and then guidance on setting up, building, deploying, and validating the outcomes of your Digital Twin prototype. Let's start by establishing a common understanding of the concepts, definitions, and value, and how this all came about.

This chapter will cover the following main topics:

• History of the Digital Twin
• Industry use of Digital Twins
• The value proposition of Digital Twins
• Identifying opportunities