The Object Management Group (OMG), host of the Industrial Internet Consortium and developer of enterprise integration standards and modeling standards such as the Unified Modeling Language and Model Driven Architecture, has announced the launch of the Digital Twin Consortium. Co-founders of the consortium include Ansys, Dell Technologies, Lendlease, and Microsoft.
According to OMG, the Digital Twin Consortium was developed to address three issues associated with wider acceptance and use of digital twin technology:
- Accelerate the market for digital twin technology by setting roadmaps and industry guidelines through an ecosystem of digital twin experts;
- Improve interoperability of digital twin technologies by developing best practices for security, privacy, and trustworthiness and influencing the requirements for digital twin standards; and
- Reduce the risk of capital projects and demonstrate the value of digital twin technologies through peer use cases and the development of open source code.
The founding members, along with other companies that joined the consortium prior to its launch, represent an ecosystem of the diverse business types the OMG sought to develop the consortium around, i.e., property management, construction, aerospace and defense, manufacturing, and natural resources sectors. In its release announcing the consortium’s founding, OMG said the consortium’s members will “share lessons learned from their various industries and work together to solve the challenges inherent in deploying digital twins. As requirements for new standards are defined, the Digital Twin Consortium will share those requirements with standards development organizations, such as parent company OMG.”
Other member organizations cited in OMG’s announcement of the consortium include the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, Bentley Systems, Executive Development, Gafcon, Geminus.AI, Idun Real Estate Solutions AB, imec, IOTA Foundation, IoTIFY, Luno UAB, New South Wales Government, Ricardo, Willow Technology, and WSC Technology.
Membership in the Digital Twin Consortium is open to any business, organization or entity with an interest in digital twins. Members note their commitment to using digital twins throughout their operations and supply chains and capturing best practices and standards requirements for themselves and their clients.
Dr. Richard Soley, Digital Twin Consortium executive director, said, "Most definitions of digital twin are complicated, but it's not a complicated idea. Digital twins are used for jet engines, the Mars rover, a semiconductor chip, a building, and more. What makes a digital twin difficult is a lack of understanding and standardization. Similar to what we've done for digital transformation with the Industrial Internet Consortium and for software quality with the Consortium for Information and Software Quality, we plan to build an ecosystem of users, drive best practices for digital twin use, and define requirements for new digital twin standards.”
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