Rafi Hattar, vice-president Middle East at Hexagon PPM, the world’s leading provider of asset lifecycle solutions for design, construction, and operation of industrial facilities has discussed the role of digitalisation for operations and maintenance activities
“In the last two years we have created more data than during the whole existence of humanity and even with all of it, we still don’t have enough actionable information available. How can we manage the overwhelming amount of data in the context of facility operations and maintenance, to ensure that we will always have relevant, correct, and up-to-date information available for everyone who needs it?”
The answer is simple – by having full, digital access to up-to-date and actionable information. The only way to achieve this is to digitalise the existing information. The good news is that most of the time, everything you need is already there. The documentation and data needed for digital operations of a facility are often there, but probably not organised, digitised, consolidated or centralised. A cornerstone of digital transformation and creating a centralized access to information for facility owners is an intelligent digital twin – a digital representation of the physical facility.
At a minimum the digital twin may simply be a set of structured data and documents that fully describe the facility configuration, but may contain more sophisticated components, like 3D visualisation, integration with operational systems, advanced analytics, and more. The goal of the digital twin is to provide a virtual representation of both the current and historic facility configuration along with related performance data.
The benefits of digital twin technology go beyond digital transformation - a digital twin will improve overall project performance by enabling consistent and standardised processes, and shorter communication cycles.
For more information about how digital twin technology can help you to digitally transform your operations and maintenance activities, please visit hexagonppm.com
