Virtual Digital Twin Platform
This project is a collaboration between universities, the government, & the private sector. This project started at a conference in Banff CAN with the idea of helping the offsite industry scale … over the next decades, there will be hundreds (~500) of new offsite factories built in the U.S. A digital twin blends process simulation, virtual reality, and automated real-time sensing technologies to model, analyze, and monitor the performance of factories. A digital twin of a factory enables operators/investors to evaluate actual production performance & design new factories quickly & affordably.
If you’re interested in having a digital twin built for you, or would like to beta test the product, please fill out the form below.
The Digital Twin utilizes virtual reality, discrete-event simulation, and sensors for data collection.
What is a digital twin?
A digital twin is simply a virtual model of a process, product or service that enables the pairing of virtual and physical worlds. It is useful in the analysis of data and the monitoring of systems to mitigate costly expenses or disruptions before they occur.
Physical-Digital Integration
The figure above shows a high level concept for collecting various types of information from a factory including data, its resources, and the details of the module that is ultimately built. That information is used to create or update a digital twin of the entire factory process that can be used to determine how to remove bottlenecks or add stations with the least amount of disruption.
Discrete event simulation (DES) is a method for simulating processes as discrete activities that are dependent on the availability of resources. DES is a highly detailed and faithful virtual representation of what happens on the factory floor depicting how human workers handle materials and interact with the equipment in the factory.
For more information on the Digital Twin Platform, please fill out the form below.
The Team
Dr. Joseph Louis’s research interest lies at the intersection of simulation, visualization, and automation within the context of construction operations. He draws upon concepts in these areas to provide construction managers with better means of planning, monitoring, and controlling their operations to improve safety, maximize productivities, and minimize equipment idle times. Dr. Louis is passionate about engaging with the broader community and has organized university-level TEDx talks
Ankur Podder joined the Industrialized Construction Innovation (ICI) team at NREL in 2019 with a focus on buildings advanced manufacturing and integration science. His research work aims to facilitate the integration of a wide range of energy efficiency strategies and distributed energy resources during factory production of permanent modular buildings. His work involves strategizing the blending of factory information modeling and building information modeling into NREL's building energy modeling capabilities as well as accelerating whole-building systems integration in upcoming modular net-zero energy buildings.
Colby Swanson is a serial entrepreneur and innovation strategist with 20 years in the building industry. He is currently the Managing Partner at Momentum Innovation Group (MIG), an innovation consulting firm helping clients drive transformation in their business and find unseen areas of opportunity and growth and also serves as the Exec. Director of the Modular Mobilization Coalition (MMC), made up of 15 modular construction companies who own and operate a nationwide network of two dozen factories delivering modular solutions to the apartment, hotels, and single family home markets.