Industrial Transformation Blog

In May 2019 LNS Research attended AspenTech’s annual user conference, OPTIMIZE 2019 in Houston, Texas. This year's event drew a broad range of attendees ― in all 1,000 from 300 operating companies and ten leading universities, across 50 countries. The software vendor was also joined front and center by a major partner, Emerson, which showcased the integration of its Mimic™ Operator Training System (OTS) with AspenTech's HYSYS simulation software, and its expanding set of asset optimization services for typical customers. With some 150 breakout sessions, it was impossible to cover all tracks, so I spent the majority of the time focused on asset performance management.

In April 2019 LNS attended the first annual IBM IoT Exchange event held in Orlando, FL. The company focused its three-day conference on how to achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness, and reduce costs through the application of IoT data and artificial intelligence (AI).  The conference marked the first time that users of IBM’s engineering lifecycle management (DOORS family), enterprise asset management (Maximo portfolio), facilities lifecycle management (TRIRIGA), and the Watson IoT Platform solutions all met together under the Watson IoT umbrella.

Understanding the vendor landscape is essential for both industrial organizations as well as solution providers that seek to understand competitors, and the process Digital Twin market is no exception. There is a broad spectrum of Digital Twin vendors across the industry, but basically, they fall into a handful of supplier categories:

KBC, a Yokogawa company, recently released the latest version of its flagship process modeling software, Petro-SIM 7, featuring tight integration with OSIsoft’s PI historian and Asset Framework (AF). With the launch of Petro-SIM 7, KBC introduced a solution for upstream in wellhead to production facilities, refining, and petrochemicals; and in so doing claimed the Digital Twin status.

On Wednesday, April 10, LNS Research hosted the webcast, “Digital Twin: Unlocking IX in Process Plant and Industry.” The presentation revealed the state of the market, clarified what Digital Twin really means beyond the marketing hype, and showed how companies can use it to drive Operational Excellence.

The recent announcement by Dassault and ABB of a partnership highlights an Industrial Transformation and digitalization trend – to fill in the gaps of a comprehensive asset lifecycle and value chain solution, especially in the Digital Twin arena by the growing number of partnerships.

Last week LNS attended the annual ABB Customer World held here in Houston. ACW was a successful and well delivered conference with over 10,000 customer attendees from all over the world. The LNS team was part of a larger contingent of media and analysts who were exposed to a technology tour and number of meetings that allowed us to gain a better understanding of ABB’s overall direction, new organization and strategic partnerships.

It was a pleasure to attend the recent Hart Energy 2019 Influential Women in Energy Luncheon in Houston. In its second year, the event had almost 1000 attendees, double that of last year, and honored 25 outstanding women across the energy industry.  The pinnacle award recipient was M. Katherine Banks, Ph.D. currently Vice-Chancellor of Engineering and National Laboratories, and Dean of Engineering at Texas A&M University.

The Digital Twin market is evolving fast – yes, it affects strategies of independent software vendors and automation vendors. But, it also has significant implications for field service providers, engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC), and process licensors. It’s quite surprising to see how many different types of companies could be or are already involved with Digital Twin.

Every year LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in Industrial Transformation. Dan Miklovic’s 2018 forecast focused on the evolution of asset performance management (APM) 4.0 with the shift in messaging to business-driven benefits, the growth of Digital Twins, autonomous device support, and the evolving vendor landscape. In our 2018 Report card, I noted that the Digital Twin is evolving to include the physical and process aspects of the twin. This evolution is happening primarily at two levels, in the design and engineering space, and in the operations space. However, there is still a lack of general industry understanding of what constitutes a Digital Twin.