With digital twins for an intelligent data strategy

With increasing digitalization, data is becoming a real treasure for manufacturing companies. However, a structured and target-oriented framework is required in order to be able to use this as a business asset. Far too often, however, the treasure trove of data is still hidden in different silos and can only be connected with great effort or not at all. An intelligent and coherent data strategy is therefore essential for maintaining competitiveness.

An important element is the uniform understanding of meaning and context. Semantics makes data universally usable regardless of its source, while digital twins homogenize it both vertically - from source to application - and horizontally across the entire lifecycle. Digital twins are digital representatives of real products, product types and instances. They bring together data from silos and ensure the semantic structuring of large volumes of data.

From theory to practical implementation

Technology stacks such as the Bosch Semantic Stack provide the basis for creating digital twins, aspects and semantic descriptions, so-called aspect models. For concrete implementation, use cases from practice are needed to run through the process. The introduction of semantic data structuring should also take place in this way: starting with a use case that generates immediate added value and enables the workforce to understand the purpose of the changeover.

The full potential of this new data strategy will unfold in subsequent projects when the increasingly dense network of homogenized data makes it possible to answer increasingly complex questions. With the Bosch Semantic Stack, each digital twin can also act as an administration shell. This industry standard developed by the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) is easy to use for external developers and software, as full documentation is available as open source. The following examples show what this means in practice.

PLM portal: the starting point

Bosch Rexroth manufactures innovative, industrial equipment that is often ordered very individually and from a batch size of one. While the variety of products is a great advantage for customers, employees face a challenge: finding information about a specific product, which may have been manufactured several years ago, within a reasonable time frame. To overcome this challenge, the master data of each product should be consolidated on a single platform, the PLM portal. This is where the digital twin technology of the Bosch Semantic Stack from Bosch Connected Industry comes into play: a digital twin is created during product development and accompanies the physical products throughout their entire life cycle.

Thanks to the globally unique Global Thing ID (GLTID), product data can be clearly identified and assigned. New products are added daily to the 300 million already recorded. The individual digital twins are also being continuously expanded, for example by integrating additional field data. This creates an ever more complete picture of the respective product. The portal reveals its true potential in the wealth of use cases that can be easily added to it: Dependencies, trends or cross-connections that were previously hidden can also be identified here.

Example PCF calculation

One example is the calculation of the product carbon footprint (PCF), which is mandatory for automotive batteries from 2027 as part of the European Union's Green Deal. Data collection requires the support of all relevant departments, combined with external data from the manufacturers of individual components. Compiling and consolidating this data is a time-consuming process that starts anew with every product.