February 6, 2020 – Hexagon’s PPM division, a provider of engineering software for the design, construction and operation of plants, ships and offshore facilities, announced the availability of HxGN SDx Connector for OSIsoft to accelerate the process of creating, deploying and using industrial-scale digital twins.
HxGN SDx is a platform for creating digital twins from multiple data streams at chemical facilities, oil and gas operations and other industrial plants across the process industries. OSIsoft’s PI System is a platform for managing and curating data from equipment, assets, plants and other critical operations. The SDx Connector for OSIsoft serves as a bridge between the two technologies, interfacing historical and real-time data from the PI System into Hexagon’s models to provide plant managers, executives and engineers greater visibility.
Digital twins – virtual models of real-world phenomena that can combine real-time data streams with CAD/CAM models, pricing forecasts, weather information, maintenance and equipment logs, and other sources of information into a cohesive whole – will become pervasive in industry as companies expand their IoT initiatives. Digital twins will also become a medium for breaking down data silos between internal groups or sharing data between manufacturers, service providers and end users. The research firm IDC predicts that by 2024, 50% of manufacturers will network product and asset digital twins into digital twin ecosystems for a system-level view of their business and a 5% reduction in the cost of quality.