Sami’s business review: The new possibilities of going digital – How do we benefit from them?
Sami Koponen, Vice President: Process & Industry, discusses the new possibilities of going digital: digital twins, distributed design & VR/AR.
Written by Sami Koponen
Posted on October 28, 2020
In the field of engineering, companies have operated with digital solutions for a long time. Moving from drawing boards to CAD was the first step. With today’s technologies, we now have new possibilities to take the next step and take advantage of digitalization.
In this era of rapid development, and with the pandemic limiting human contact, nearly every part of our daily lives is affected by technology. We cannot live completely virtually, but technology does offer amazing opportunities to make life easier and more fun and work more effective by adopting and reinventing applications across the scope of our experience.
Various advanced devices and platforms connected to the internet change the way we communicate, play, shop, study and design, among other things. Just think of all the technology we use daily from kitchen appliances to mobile and industrial applications.
Banking, for example. You can use your credit card or online credentials so that transactions can be done anywhere in the world any time of the day and your balance is always up to date. Yes, this is daily business and has been for a quite a long time. However, at work, most likely in design and engineering, this digital step is not yet daily business.
CADMATIC's CoDesigner – the best solution in the world for work sharing according to customer feedback and case studies – works in much the same way as your credit card. It allows multiple project participants to work on the same project at the same time despite their location, whether at the office or working from home. CoDesigner keeps your project updated; just like your account balance is always up to date.
Virtual and augmented realities (VR, AR) and digital twins present another example. These technologies have been in use in gaming and entertainment for quite some time and are now making their way into industrial projects for plant design, construction and operations. Digitalization is creating added value by increasing productivity and safety, for example.
In addition to the above, who would have thought some years ago that project and construction site management can be done in the cloud using digital twins? A bit like saving and managing a multitude of family photos on a server outside your home. Now it feels completely natural, and it is actually more efficient, easier and safer compared to earlier file-based more closed information management systems.
For example, there is a big oil company that runs and manages their projects by using a digital twin directly from the cloud, providing access to the system to their personnel anywhere at any time. There is no need to be afraid of digital twin implementation anymore – it can be achieved quickly and successfully. Thanks to our digital-twin approach, CADMATIC eShare provides an excellent platform for this type of information management without the need for massive data migration projects.
By adopting and reinventing the best solutions and practices we can now make projects and work available and accessible to every professional despite their location or time zone. At CADMATIC, using our very own technology, database, visualization and modelling, gives us complete freedom of development, and some of the best examples of this are our CoDesigner and eShare products. It is high time to take the next step in digitalization by implementing these possibilities.
