The Digital Twin Consortium® (DTC) published the Business Maturity Model white paper to guide organizations in designing and implementing digital twins that improve business outcomes.
“Change in the digital age is happening at speed and with high frequency, creating disruptions that are difficult to identify,” said Dan Isaacs, GM & CTO of the DTC. “When companies take an ad-hoc approach to designing and implementing digital twins, it can lead to architectural inconsistencies, making it difficult to share data across business units and to establish an end-to-end view of business processes.”
The Business Maturity Model can help organizations realize the value digital twins add to their business. The five stages of maturity are, in summary:
- Passive: Active and passive resistance to digitalization. Little or no digitization is found in many legacy projects.
- Starter: Passive observers of digital twins where there is some virtual and digital modeling. Their existence and value are recognized, but adoption does not yet seriously feature on the agenda. The attitude towards change is that it is a necessary evil rather than a business opportunity.
- Progressive: Early-stage participants in digital twinning where there is leverage of operational data for insights with some integration and automation, but only in siloed proofs of concept starting to realize the value, usually in pockets of enlightenment where the attitude to change is also more positive and accepting.
- Mature: Active prototypes of Digital Twins that are comprehensive with simulation for future “What if scenarios.” The owners see the benefit and start sharing data between point solutions, often providing the technology platforms, and are actively encouraging collaboration on digital twin projects across the siloes of the organization. This integration follows the Systems of Systems approach and spreads across all phases controlled by the owners internally.
- Master: Active adoption of digital twins and continuous evolution of the use cases in different parts of the organization with autonomous decision-making and the ability to learn and act on behalf of users with no human interference.
“The elements of the Business Maturity Model describe the competencies that drive the organization’s maturity stages,” said Dana Kawas, Co- founder and CEO of Thynkli and one of the authors of the white paper. “With the support of digital twin technology, performance in each competency can be improved.”
“We recommend collecting the assessment data from different organizational stakeholders at different levels and in various business units,” added Tim Connolly, CEO at APTUMX, and one of the authors of the white paper. “The Business Maturity Model white paper provides guidance organizations can use to identify where to start and how to prioritize their actions when designing and deploying digital twin systems.”
