Unlocking Business Value through Digital Twins: The AWS and Bosch Collaboration

Introduction

McKinsey research shows that a remarkable 70% of top tech executives are investing in digital twins, highlighting the growing momentum for this technology. Their goal is to achieve more agile and resilient operations, as digital twins offer a wide range of applications, from remote control and monitoring to complex system simulations, enabling a new era of efficiency and interoperability in asset maintenance.

Digital twins are revolutionizing the way companies operate by creating a complete digital counterpart of physical assets, processes, facilities, and operations. By harnessing data and advanced analytics, digital twins facilitate real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, empowering businesses to make informed decisions with precision and enhance the user experience. In addition, the integration of Generative AI allows for more intuitive interactions by enabling users to query the digital twin using natural language.

The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and advancements in sensor technology have enabled the collection of vast amounts of real-time data from manufacturing equipment and processes, providing the necessary inputs to create and maintain accurate digital twins. Moreover, modern manufacturing processes are growing more complex, and digital twins allow for the simulation and optimization of these intricate systems without disrupting physical operations. This blog post will cover the collaboration between AWS and Bosch Digital Twin Industries in delivering digital twin solutions, successful customer deployments, and co-innovation in areas such as simulations and Generative AI. It will also highlight the benefits seen by customers like Cadent Gas by deploying the solution.

How Cadent Gas reduced operational cost and unplanned downtime

Cadent Gas is a leading gas distribution network provider in the UK. With a vast network of 88,000 miles of pipelines serving millions of homes and businesses. They faced challenges in managing their infrastructure, and preparing for the transition to alternative gases such as LPG and hydrogen. Cadent Gas needed a solution to ensure its existing infrastructure could handle these new gas compositions while minimizing risks and costly downtimes.

Through a strategic partnership with AWS and Bosch Digital Twin Industries, Cadent Gas is focussing on implementing a digital twin solution that leverages AWS IoT TwinMaker and Amazon SageMaker. This approach enables them to monitor vibrations and simulate fluid density changes within their pipelines, providing invaluable insights into potential risks and the readiness of their infrastructure for future gas compositions.

The digital twin solution will empower Cadent Gas to take a proactive approach in managing its pipeline network. By predicting potential issues before they occur, the company can mitigate risks, minimize downtime, and potentially save significant costs associated with installing or updating new pipelines. This can translate into substantial annual savings, as downtime and infrastructure upgrades can incur substantial expenses for oil and gas businesses.

The true success of this project lies in the tangible benefits it brings to Cadent Gas and, by extension, their customers. By proactively addressing infrastructure challenges and minimizing operational disruptions, Cadent Gas can maintain a consistent and reliable supply of gas to millions of homes and businesses across the UK. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also contributes to the overall well-being and economic stability of the communities it serves. By implementing this digital twin, Cadent Gas can save costs associated with installing or updating new pipelines, while minimizing downtime and associated expenses, which can be a significant annual amount for oil and gas businesses.

Unlocking Business Value with a Unified Digital Twin Framework

Industrial trends are driving towards a unified architecture that spans data collection and contextualization, spatial data lakes, and predictive modeling, including various applications that consume and action the data. This unified architecture encompassed by the AWS Digital Twin Framework, which brings together AWS capabilities across IoT, Simulations, AI/ML, and Spatial Data Lakes. The AWS Digital Twin Framework provides customers with flexible pathways to build, deploy, and scale digital twins, regardless of their starting point. It offers a comprehensive guidance that enables customers to leverage data collection, contextualization, spatial data lakes, predictive modeling, and applications, all within a cohesive guidance.

Figure 1: AWS Digital Twin Framework

By systematically adding capabilities (See Fig.1) from immersive simulations to IoT integration and collaborative applications – it provides a scalable approach that establishes not only the connectivity and data management and contextualization as a foundation for system wide intelligence, but also drives operational intelligence and predictive analytics with the relevant spatial contextualization. The Framework adapts to different use cases and business needs, not only delivering best practice on how one can drive efficiency and reduce cost across the business, but also foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation in the organization.

The digital twin solution by AWS and Bosch, built using the AWS Digital Twin Framework, helps industrial customers control operating costs across the enterprise by providing contextualized real-time data from operational and transactional systems, 3D immersive and specific predictive models and simulations to identify and root cause incidents, predict maintenance needs, and improve workforce productivity, all in a visual and collaborative environment.Building on the success customers such as Cadent Gas have realized, AWS and Bosch Digital Twin Industries are actively exploring further advancements in digital twin technologies, and scaling further capabilities , working closely within the Framework’s guidance.

One area of focus is the integration of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI capabilities, using Amazon Bedrock, to enhance the user experience and facilitate more intuitive interactions with digital twins. Additionally, the partnership is working towards developing self-learning digital twins that can continuously update themselves based on real-time data and simulations using services from the framework such as AWS TwinFlow, enabling predictive maintenance, scenario analysis, and prescriptive guidance for optimal decision-making. AWS Twinflow enables customers to deploy millions of self-updating predictive models across a distributed, heterogeneous computing architecture with traceability and auditability.

Conclusion

The collaboration between AWS and Bosch Digital Twin Industries exemplifies the power of synergy in driving innovation and delivering tangible business value to our customers. By combining AWS’s cutting-edge cloud services with Bosch’s industrial expertise and domain knowledge, customers can unlock the full potential of digital twins, enabling them to stay ahead of the curve in an ever-evolving industrial landscape.

As the partnership continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more developments in digital twin technologies, empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions, enhance efficiency, and drive sustainable growth by combining the AWS Digital Twin Framework with Bosch’s industrial expertise.

Learn more about the Bosch Digital Twin for Integrated Asset Performance Management, available on AWS Marketplace. Visit the Bosch demo at the AWS Booth at Hannover Messe (between April 22-26 2024) at Hall 15, Booth D76 and book a meeting with Bosch and AWS at the event, through our landing page.

About the Authors

Pallavi Chari leads Go-To-Market for Industrial IoT Applications and Digital Twins at AWS. She has more than 18 years of experience in product strategy and propositions working with several of the world’s leading technology companies. She has supported industrial customers and partners in transformation efforts working across IoT, Edge Computing, 5G Connectivity, and AI/ML to create business value. She is an Economics graduate with a Master’s degree in Business Administration.

Sophie Pagalday is the Sr. Product Marketing Lead for the AWS for Industrial & Manufacturing growing portfolio of purpose-built services. She’s spent most of her product marketing career in the industrial automation, logistics, and supply chain space, focused on technology ranging from enterprise work management systems to robotics. As an advocate for our customers, Sophie is relentless about learning about the challenges they face and how to best communicate how our services can help them achieve their goals.

Matthias Wieland has worked with Bosch for 18 years, and has a background in mechanical engineering, His diverse career has spanned plant quality management, project management, and sales leadership for major Bosch customers in the automotive industry. Matthias’ current focus is on Bosch’s digital business solutions, with a focus on Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) where he oversees Bosch’s partnerships with AWS and select ecosystem partners globally. Additionally, he spearheads sales efforts across Europe (EMEA) for Bosch Digital Twin Industries.