Building on its proven expertise in the creation of multi-sector digital twins, IRT SystemX is implementing an ambitious new R&D program called JNI, aimed at developing a tool-based methodological environment for the design of digital twins, to enhance the resilience and sustainability of complex industrial systems. Already bringing together a dozen industrial and academic partners, this program is evaluating the performance and testing the interoperability of digital twins in a number of industrial use cases. The shared ambition is to bring out proposals for standards at national and even European level, to facilitate data interfacing and interoperability between systems..
SystemX, the technological research institute (IRT) dedicated to digital engineering for the systems of the future, is implementing a structuring research program for all industrial sectors, called "Digital Twins for the Resilience and Sustainability of Industrial Systems" (JNI). This 5-year program already brings together Airbus Protect, Cervaal, Cosmo Tech, GRTgaz, Naval Group, RTE, Safran, Sector Group, Schneider Electric, as well as several academic partners, with the ambition of defining and applying a European reference framework for the design, development, interoperability and evaluation of digital twins for complex industrial systems, in order to guarantee the sovereignty, control and performance of these systems. The program already includes two R&D projects, and will be adding new partners as new projects are launched.
" The secure use of data from industrial systems is at the heart of the industry of the future and the extended enterprise. Its aim is to increase the operational efficiency of industrial systems throughout the supply chain. There is as yet no standard for collecting this data, and each application has its own framework, which makes it very difficult to scale up this type of application. The digital twin, aimed at digitally replicating industrial systems, offers a tremendous opportunity for the emergence of a standard for data interfacing, an essential pillar for the massive deployment of the industry of the future. This is the ambition of this new program, which is designed to provide a framework for all industrial sectors."comments Abdelkrim Doufène, Director of Strategy and Programs at IRT SystemX.
The genesis of this R&D program lies in the results of a literature review, interviews and collaborative workshops with some thirty industrial partners and experts. The participants highlighted the potential of digital twins at several levels: industrial process optimization, logistics flow optimization and parts call prediction, standardization of interfaces at the service of industry, simulation and prediction of non-quality in production, deployment of predictive maintenance and optimization of additive manufacturing. The roadmap for this program has been designed around the prioritization of these topics, as part of a co-construction approach.
This program, worth around ten million euros, is structured around a first, particularly ambitious pivotal project ("Assisted and tool-based construction of digital twins for industrial systems, including Security by Design aspects"). Bringing together Airbus Protect, Cervaal, Naval Group, RTE, Schneider Electric and academic partners over a 3-year period, it aims to define a tool-based methodological environment for the development, low-cost instantiation and deployment of digital twins of complex industrial systems, while taking into account risk assessment and compliance with cybersecurity aspects. The methodologies developed are intended to be generic and industry-agnostic.
The aim is to make proposals for national and European standardization of the methodological and technological reference framework developed as part of this program. Discussions are already underway with associations such as AfNet, AIF and Afnor.
Use case-oriented projects
In the era of complex industrial systems, and to meet the challenge of reducing maintenance costs, IRT SystemX is launching the "Predictive Maintenance and Health Indicators" project with its industrial partners Airbus Protect, Cosmo Tech, GRTgaz, RTE, Safran and Sector Group, which addresses predictive maintenance issues using digital twins. The aim is to define relevant health indicators based on data flows collected in real/different time on the industrial asset, by developing generic tools and methods for selecting frugal data to build degradation or aging models. With this in mind, the digital twin should enable weak signals to be detected and predicted, in order to propose optimal predictive maintenance plans.
The program's roadmap calls for the launch of a total of 5 projects, lasting a minimum of 3 years. Upcoming projects will address the following issues:
- Digital Twins for optimizing production resources and the supply chain
- Digital twins for optimizing energy consumption and carbon footprint
- Digital twins for auditing and optimizing the resilience of a critical system
Finally, SystemX's ambition is to make available to all IRTs and ITEs, within the framework of the Fit association, the methodological environment for designing industrial digital twins, so that each sector can use interoperable digital twin technology to improve the global and local management of its complex industrial systems.