Digital twins have evolved into a practical engineering tool that is reshaping how factories are designed, commissioned, operated and optimised
By creating dynamic virtual representations of products, equipment and entire production systems, manufacturers can validate decisions before committing time, capital and resources in the physical world.
According to Daniel Bierwirth, senior software development consultant at Unity Software, digital twins are now delivering measurable value across the manufacturing lifecycle. “Digital twins are no longer an emerging technology. Leading manufacturers are already using and deploying them in their day-to-day product development cycles,” he says. “When you work with digital twins you can reduce development costs by around 50% just by being able to validate a new assembly line without building it physically.”
REDUCING RISK
One of the greatest advantages of digital twins is their ability to simulate outcomes before physical assets are built or modified.
“Digital twins allow manufacturers to reduce risk by simulating outcomes before they actually have to make costly changes on the real assembly line,” says Bierwirth. “They have a virtual representation of the assembly line, they can replay the process, they can tweak parameters and procedures, and see if the outcome improves or not before they deploy the new process into the existing manufacturing line.”
This enables engineering teams to move beyond assumptions and intuition. “This means when they make design decisions or change decisions, they have a data record. It’s not based on a gut feeling,” Bierwirth explains. “They have hard numbers that they can use as proof points.”
The result is faster decision-making backed by evidence rather than trial and error.
PHYSICALLY ACURATE VIRTUAL FACTORIES
Historically, early factory planning often relied on CAD layouts, spreadsheets and physical mock-ups. Digital twins provide a more immersive alternative.
“What is interesting with our software Unity, you can actually use digital twins as virtual replicas of real equipment and start in an early phase in a lightweight way, prototyping new assembly lines,” says Bierwirth. He contrasts this with traditional methods: “Without those tools, people would use paper or whiteboard drawings, which is not that insightful.”
Instead, with Unity engineers can work with a realistic virtual environment, he continues: “Here, you have a one-to-one physically correct representation that allows you to quickly mock up a new production line and hand it over to decision makers.”
Unity Industry is a suite of products designed to help OEMs import and optimise complex 3D, CAD, and BIM models, while Unit Asset Manager seamlessly integrates into workflows to ensure cloud-based unified 3D asset management across all models and teams. These capabilities allow engineering teams to evaluate layout options, equipment positioning and process flows long before any physical installation begins.
IMPROVING COLLABORATION ACROSS DISCIPLINES
One of the recurring themes throughout the digital twin journey is the democratisation of engineering information. Traditionally, factory planning decisions have been made within specialist software environments accessible only to engineering teams. Digital twins provide a common platform that can be understood by stakeholders across the organisation.
“If you think about how people on the shop floor level work, they typically have to work with the planning result created by an engineer, but the shop floor worker actually has the domain expertise because he’s working in the factory all day long,” says Bierwirth. Digital twins allow those operators to participate directly in design validation. “They are now part of the decision making process. They can immerse themselves and they can validate if the production line is actually planned correctly based on their hands-on experience.”
This human-in-the-loop approach helps ensure that factory designs are practical as well as technically correct.
VIRTUAL COMMISSIONING BEFORE INSTALLATION
The value of digital twins extends beyond planning and into commissioning. Bierwirth describes an example of a fully automated warehouse where the virtual environment is connected directly to real control systems. “The virtual warehouse is driven by 11 PLCs, so you can test the whole process as working before anything has been built physically,” he says.
This enables virtual commissioning, allowing engineers to validate automation logic, machine behaviour and process interactions in a safe environment. “Unity can connect to all kind of control systems,” Bierwirth explains, allowing PLC programmers and automation engineers to visualise how control signals affect real-world operations before deployment.
For robotic applications, digital twins also provide important contextual information.
“The robotic engineer is still working and Robot Studio is doing their robotic planning but on the other side he has the robot in context of the whole assembly line,” says Bierwirth. “That is very powerful to make sure that at a later stage when you are offline programming, you reduce the need for a rework.”
A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE: BATTERY DISASSEMBLY OPERATIONS
Ian Taylor-Spikings, research engineer at MTC, describes how digital twins were used to develop an automated electric vehicle battery disassembly facility. “We needed to create a safe environment for disassembly of electric vehicle batteries,” he says. “There’s going to be millions of them by 2030 so it’s best to get working on that now.”
The project faced several challenges, including validating robot paths, accommodating multiple battery designs and training operators before equipment arrived.
“If we have the operators trained and aware of what they’re doing before the machines are here, then that lowers lead times, lowers costs, makes it a lot easier and less of a headache for everyone involved,” he explains.
By creating a digital twin connected to real operational data, the team established what Taylor-Spikings describes as “a single source of truth.” The visual nature of the environment also simplified decision-making: “You can actually physically see where the robot is going. If you want to know where the robot is, look at the digital twin.”
THE NEXT PHASE
Looking ahead, both Bierwirth and Taylor-Spikings see digital twins evolving into collaborative environments that bring together engineering, operations and maintenance teams. Taylor-Spikings describes a future where, “safety officers, engineers, operators, all in the same space” can interact with the same digital representation of a process.
As manufacturers continue to pursue shorter development cycles, greater operational efficiency and more agile production systems, digital twins are becoming far more than visualisation tools. They are increasingly serving as decision-making platforms that connect design, commissioning and operations into a continuous digital thread.
