Simulation Digital Twins were center stage at Microsoft Build, the annual conference hosted by the American software giant for software engineers and developers working on their market-leading technology platforms.
Speaking at Build, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Azure IoT Sam George explained how the power of the Azure cloud was augmenting physical systems by enabling the modeling of those systems in all of their complexity. These models exist in what Microsoft and other technology leaders call the metaverse, an alternate digital reality that mirrors the physical world where digital trends and transformations can be traced, and digital experiments undertaken to test decisions before they are made in the real world.
“As more and more companies start to take advantage of these capabilities and interact with each other and partner in these virtual worlds we’re really creating the Metaverse,” explained George. “We’re creating the intersection of all of these digital realities that are then optimizing the physical reality.”
In the virtual metaverse, digital twins play an increasingly important role. With IoT devices capturing data about physical systems and pushing that data to the cloud, decision-makers are able to understand the current state of those systems with greater accuracy than ever before. They have the capacity to visualize the ways in which the different parts of their enterprise systems connect and interact and comprehend how external forces impact on the efficiency of those systems.
Harnessing the computing power of the cloud and working virtually and in real-time, companies have an opportunity to understand what might come next for their systems and prepare for those eventualities. Basic digital twins mean trends can be extrapolated and decisions taken to keep a supply chain on track, a manufacturing facility producing at scale, and a logistics team delivering on time and on budget.
Yet there are still distinct limits to what standard digital twins can achieve on their own. Historical trends, it’s often noted, eventually stop trending, and decision-makers need their systems to be resilient to sudden shifts in supply or demand, and to other disruptions with the potential to throw companies into crisis.
Monitoring the current state of the system is not enough to determine what the future will hold. To make accurate predictions about the future state of a complex industrial system requires more than monitoring; it requires simulation.
According to Sam George, simulation is the key to leveraging the power of the digital twins in the cloud.
“The killer app for all of this is simulation. Simulation enables you to take copies of the Digital Twin, run simulations on it and those simulations can then seek to find optimizations that are too complex to find by monitoring the physical environment alone,” George said in his Microsoft Build keynote address.
Cosmo Tech has long pushed the capacity of its 360° Simulation Digital Twin technology to optimize the world’s most complex industrial systems and drive truly transformational business outcomes. As Microsoft’s Tony Shakib recently put it, “Today, reliable prediction in the face of uncertainty is finally here with Cosmo Tech’s Simulation Digital Twin.”
Whether optimizing production planning in the automotive sector, accelerating innovation in the aerospace industry, improving efficiency for manufacturers, improving accuracy for consumer packaged goods companies, lifting productivity in the transport and mobility sector, or extracting maximum value from assets in the energy and utilities industry, Cosmo Tech clients are leveraging the power of simulation to make optimal choices and generate the greatest return on investment.
Cosmo Tech has the bold ambition to make their Simulation Digital Twin technology easy to build, adopt, and deploy, so that any business in any industry and in any country can harness the power of digital twins. Little surprise, then, that Microsoft brought Cosmo Tech’s 360° Simulation Digital Twin technology to the forefront at Microsoft Build 2021.
To illustrate the power of 360° Simulation Digital Twins, Sam George explored Cosmo Tech’s recent work in Paris Saclay on the outskirts of the French capital.
Dramatic growth in the Paris suburbs is creating a challenge, he explained, as city authorities sought to accommodate growing energy demands while still meeting their environmental and sustainability goals. Over the next two decades, their goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent, as well as reduce the price of energy by more than 45 percent.
City authorities modeled the infrastructure of 27 different city areas using Cosmo Tech and Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twin technology, tracking changes and asking what-if questions to determine the impact of future energy management strategies.
“What if we use geothermal as an energy source? Where can it be placed and what is the impact of the placement on distribution?” explained George. “What new energy sources are required for business parks or higher density suburbs, and where should they be placed? What is the impact of higher efficiency buildings on energy usage in the future?”
Thanks to Cosmo Tech 360° Simulation Digital Twin technology coupled with the cloud computing power of Microsoft Azure Digital Twin, Paris Saclay was able to identify the optimal strategy to achieve both their carbon emissions reduction targets and their energy spend targets, and both while anticipating and aligning with existing and future environmental regulations.
“With a solution in place,” concluded George, “they give confidence to their city investors that their investments will balance growth and sustainability goals, avoiding being out of compliance with energy regulations.”
Watch the complete webinar to learn how Cosmo Tech and Microsoft combine technologies to steer in transformational business outcomes. You can also have a look here to discover more about this strategic team up.
