From Insight to Action: Using Digital Twins and Process Mining to Drive Continuous Improvement

Digital twin technology and process mining are revolutionizing how organizations conceive operational efficiency and innovation. A digital twin is a real-time digital replica of a physical object, process, or system. Digital twins operate in real time by continuously harvesting, analyzing, and feeding the data from its physical counterpart to imitate and exemplify the real-world behavior. This allows organizations to quickly model for future outcomes and identify inefficiencies to optimize the performance of operational activities.

Process mining is the act of analyzing event logs from IT systems to visualize, track, and improve business processes. When applied, process mining exposes the actual process workflows, often much different than previously assumed—and identifies process bottlenecks/things that get in the way or deviate from process completion that affect overall efficiency. In combination digital twins and process mining provide a holistic and intelligent approach to understanding and improving sufficient data in complex systems.

The hybrid offering is being adopted across industries and particularly among innovators due to organizational commitment and investment. As major digital twin organizations begin to diversify their offerings and digital twin technology becomes easier to explore, organizations are beginning to empower individuals and teams to move from reactive, to proactive, and now predictive operations. In this article we will consider how digital twins and process mining align to help contribute to continuous improvement, and how they are shaping the future of business performance.

How Digital Twin Technology Companies Are Transforming Business

Digital twin technology companies are revolutionizing operational approaches – on a sector by sector basis – in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy, automotive and logistics. These companies build complex digital twins that allow people and organizations to track performance, identify anomalies, and make data driven decision in real-time. Some of the leading companies with digital twin solutions are leading the movement in creating digital twin platforms that connect physical systems with their virtual digital twins.

Furthermore, digital twin start-ups are delivering cutting edge innovation. Digital twin start-ups are specializing in domain specific digital twin applications with a focus on smart cities, infrastructure resilience, and energy. As nimble and agile companies, each focused on a specific industry and unsatisfied with traditional digital twins, are taking a cloud-native and AI-driven approach to delivering unique digital twin solutions.

Merging Digital Twin and Process Mining for Operational Excellence

By integrating digital twin process mining, organizations can take significant steps towards real-time awareness and continuous improvement. Digital twins are dynamic representations of systems that can be simulated, while process mining extracts insight into actionable improvements by understanding in detail what processes are actually taking place in IT systems. Together, these techniques allow a business to study, in detail, their “as-designed” process, as well as their natural “as-is” or “what-if” process, comparing both movement and transparency.

Think of a manufacturing company using a digital twin to simulate their production line. The company can use process mining to track through each event log, comparing it to the virtual manifested workflow, based on unique transport time and modeled work aging. This company can immediately determine where there are lags and where resources are skewed and over-utilized. The complementary nature of these two processes enables greater transparency, root-cause analysis, and better decision-making capabilities.

Establishing operational data against simulated environments makes progress with improvements manageable, without any such adaptability. This capability to use both technologies is meaningful in high dynamic industries especially in logistics, supply chain despatch systems, and in customer service. The ability to adapt to real-time demands and situational change is critical.

Digital twin process mining tools are ushering in an innovative period for performance culture driven by profound insight, automated thinking, and agility.

Digital Twin of an Organization

A Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO) takes the notion of digital twinning beyond machines or systems, instead encompassing the enterprise as a whole, including all the processes, people, technologies, and interdependencies between them. The DTO becomes a live model of how the organization operates, and presents a complete and all-encompassing view of end-to-end operations.

A DTO continuously updates itself with data as it becomes available through the many real-time sources of data from systems like ERP, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), and Internet of Things (IoT) sources. DTOs can also simulate changes in the organization, like releasing a new product or changing supply chain strategy, while never interfering with the actual operations; a very powerful capability that allows leadership teams to make confident data-informed decisions.

The leading digital twin technology companies are also increasingly focused on DTOs to help with broader digital transformation journeys. For instance, financial services organizations are using DTOs to model compliance processes, and retailers have been using DTOs to simulate customer journeys and inventory movements.

As organizations continue to look for agility in rapidly changing and volatile markets, DTOs provide a strategic advantage for planning scenarios, managing risks, and delivering value to customers, allowing leadership to align operations in real-time with its strategic priorities.

Digital Twin as a Service

Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS) is quickly becoming the model of choice for firms who want the benefits of digital twinning without the hassle of building them from scratch. The DTaaS provider prepares a cloud-based platform and delivers digital twin models that have been prebuilt for specific use cases or sectors.

The DTaaS model provides conduits for digital twin technology for all firm sizes, even the middle- and smaller-sized firms, who can sign up for services that include simulation engines or AI analytics and process visualization, all without any prior capital investment. DTaaS is a disruptive force; especially in industries where budget constraints inhibited innovation such as logistics, healthcare, and real estate.

DTaaS is being pushed to the forefront by the leading digital twin start-ups, who are providing a range of modular, scalable, and integrable solutions. Most DTaaS platforms offer the ability to be integrated with firms’ existing ERP or IoT systems in order to provide data-driven, rapid deployment, and measurable results. With DTaaS, firms have capabilities to monitor current operations in real-time, virtually test possible improvements, and embrace a continuous improvement culture.

DTaaS provides the benefits of a digital twin to any firm, large or small. Whether a firm is paying for the subscription on a traditional monthly basis, or renting a digital twin on a per usage basis, advanced simulation and optimization tools are now available to companies at will. “DTaaS” is creating an environment where firms can make data-driven decisions.

From Insight to Action

The real potential of digital twins and process mining combined is their ability to convert insights to actions. Many organizations across a spectrum of industries are employing this combination to develop a continuous improvement loop in which decisions are data-driven and observations make way for further change.

For example, if a logistics company is a digital twin of its delivery network that is fed by real-time GPS and other data on the processes, process mining helps identify areas where routing may not be quite right. When the company can put some of these ideas to the test in the simulation, they can implement the best option and continue monitoring the results to improve even further.

In the field of health care, digital twin platforms are simulating workflows for patient care, while process mining has identified time lost while the candidate received treatment. Given this information, hospitals can then make arrangements for resource optimization, patient flow management and staff optimization without interfering with the services that are being delivered to their clients.

These examples mark a fundamental shift that moves the horizon of improvement from static to dynamic in real time. Organizations who seize on this capability are not just improving their performances, but they are ultimately insulating themselves against the unpredictable. And with scalable platforms and digital twin as a service, continuous improvement is no longer a feel-good activity but fundamentally needed.