Richard Boyd, co-founder and CEO of Ultisim, a leading digital twin and simulation learning company, challenged a capacity crowd at FABTECH 2023 to future proof their businesses and embrace digital twins as a competitive necessity.
FABTECH is North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event, held this year in Chicago through September 14.
Under the event’s Smart Manufacturing Track, Boyd’s presentation, The Simulation Equivalence Principle: Optimizing Operational Strategy with Digital Twins, served as an eye-opening experience for manufacturers looking at smart options to automate and digitize their business processes.
Boyd shared his company’s expertise and experience in helping companies leverage AI, machine learning, and digital twins to optimize processes within individual facilities and across the supply chain. Specifically, machine learning can be used to continuously ingest and organize all the digital content in supply chain processes, a particularly relevant concern given ongoing Post-COVID supply chain challenges.
“Digital twins give you a digital version of your physical assets that works in real time. More specifically, they give you a way to model and test in complex environments by simulating them,” said Boyd.
Not all digital twin initiatives are created equal.
Boyd noted that The Simulation Equivalence Principle is his company’s solution to digital twin discrepancies and is designed to achieve three major goals.
One is to ensure that any simulated system can be substituted for a real one without leaving any system artifacts. Second is to ensure seamless mix-and-match of simulated and real components. Third is to provide the most transparent environment possible for comparing individual simulation components with their sensor-based real-world counterparts.
Attendees were able to learn how digital twins can help them operate across a broader range of tasks and situations, create new demands such as increased work complexity, and develop continuous competency development and different ways of thinking – while avoiding cognitive overload.
Boyd is a serial entrepreneur, tech consultant, celebrated author and sought-after speaker on virtual worlds, computer gaming, machine learning and human/computer interfaces. Boyd and his teams work with a wide array of industries outside of manufacturing, including energy, healthcare, defense, education and motion pictures. He was a recent XPRIZE semifinalist for his Community Confidence COVID-19 machine learning dashboard.
“It is now possible for an AI system to detect what process a person is trying to execute and immediately bring resources to bear,” said Boyd. “Fabricators need to embrace this unprecedented opportunity for humans and machines to effectively collaborate towards greater efficiency, faster output, and gain competitive advantage.”