AWS has announced IoT TwinMaker to help customers build operational digital twins. According to AWS a digital twin is “A living digital representation of an individual physical system that is dynamically updated with data to mimic the true structure, state, and behavior of the physical system and used to drive business outcomes to streamline operations, optimize resources, and anticipate issues.” Enterprises seek to use digital twins for purposes such as optimizing performance, avoiding equipment failures, training operators, etc.

AWS IoT TwinMaker is a powerful service that lets customers build highly contextualized 3D scenes and digital twin applications. Noteworthy aspects of IoT TwinMaker include the ability to:     

• Easily access data for your digital twin from diverse sources without having to move your data to a central location. 
• Model your physical systems by connecting and adding context to disparate silos of data to understand your environment.
• Create an immersive 3D view into your operations to optimize and improve performance.
  

Yet, the efficacy of a digital twin is critically dependent upon the data that is fed to it. After all, it is the data that the twin uses to help users derive insights. Well-managed data inputs can have immense speed, quality, governance, and scale benefits.

This is where Element Unify can help with its knowledge graph-based approach to tracking and managing data relationships. To bring the power of Unify to bear on digital twin development, we have collaborated closely with the IoT TwinMaker team to integrate Unify with IoT TwinMaker.

The integration allows customers to rapidly integrate IT/OT/ET source information and publish it to IoT TwinMaker. One can easily transform existing hierarchies (such as PI Asset Framework) from IIoT platforms to the modeling framework in IoT TwinMaker. Further, the integration provides an effective mechanism for keeping the digital twin operating with up-to-date, governed data. Key benefits to customers include:

• Speed - dramatic reduction in time to build and deploy twins
  
• Quality - confidence that the data used to develop the twin is sound
  
• Governance - based on on-going management of the data feed to ensure on-going value
  
• Scale - ability to scale from one to hundreds and eventually thousands of twins as the needs increase
  

We encourage you to watch a demo of the power of the AWS IoT TwinMaker - Element Unify integration on the Unify and IoT TwinMaker page.

It is really easy and straightforward to use the integration when building a digital twin with IoT TwinMaker. Simply follow three steps:

1. Connect asset information sources (SAP, P&IDs, sensors) or existing asset models (PI Asset Framework, AWS IoT SiteWise) to Unify
   
2. Contextualize and blend the information in Unify
   
3. Publish resulting graph model to IoT TwinMaker 
   

To learn more about how the Unify-IoT TwinMaker integration can deliver speed, quality, governance, and scale benefits for your digital twin projects, please visit the Unify and IoT TwinMaker page. You can also buy Element Unify or sign up for a free trial on the AWS Marketplace.

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