Digital twins aren’t only 3D models of specific goods, they try to replicate these goods digitally as close to the real world as possible — which includes changes over time.

This requires a lot of data from all kinds of sensors, but with these, digital twins can replicate how a physical good changes throughout time.

Take, for example, a turbine in a power plant – it’s subject to wear and deforms to some degree over time — with enough sensor data that can be replicated 1:1 in a digital twin.

With this, engineers, scientists, etc. can then model and simulate how this turbine will do in the future: How does wear impact its performance? Is there a risk of anything breaking, and if so, when and where?

The advantages of using digital twins include the following:

• Development times can be shortened, as prototypes and systems can be tested out virtually, which means less time has to spent on crafting the prototypes (and their many iterations due to changes over time) physically. Shorter development times allow companies to come out with new and attractive products quicker, and it reduces development costs on top of that.
• Using digital twins of products such as the turbine allows for Predictive Maintenance: It’s possible to know when parts have to be changed out and to predict potential accidents before they happen. This reduces the risk of costly errors and increases the uptime of machines, tools, and so on.
• When companies build new factories, or redesign existing ones, they can use a digital twin of the entire factory floor: This helps optimize layouts, identifying potential hazards as well as bottlenecks, and so on. By using digital twin technology and trying out many different layouts and configurations via simulations, the most efficient factories can be built.

Double Vision May Help Double Profits

Many companies with manufacturing operations use Digital Twin technology, including industrial companies, automobile companies, and companies from the aerospace and defense industry. BMW Group (NYSE:BMWKY), for example, used Digital Twinning tech to plan a new factory in Hungary.

Its partner of choice for that was NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) with its Omniverse platform — already showing that tech players can be major winners from the Digital Twin trend by supplying the necessary hardware and software to allow manufacturers to run their digital twin models.

General Electric Vernova (NYSE:GEV) uses digital twins for predictive maintenance and to keep track of many of the products it sold including aircraft engines, wind turbines, and so on.

Especially with mission-critical products such as aircraft engines, knowing about potential risks, the need for replacement, and so on is not only smart economically, but can also save lives.

If you want to benefit from digital twin technology, going for the tech companies that power this trend makes sense. NVIDIA is one option. Also, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) benefit via their cloud computing businesses that include specialized digital twin services for data aggregation, sharing, and so on.

No matter how advanced manufacturing companies use digital twins, the tech side will always be a big winner.

Investors that are interested in broader exposure to the world of tech and Artificial Intelligence should take a look at our top picks.