Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1504794
AUGUST 2023 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 9 without any doubt, digital twins for real rides in real Disney parks. It's easy, from the per- spective of the operator, to view a ride as an assembly line. Guests run through a con- veyor belt of experiences much like printed circuit boards run through a conveyor belt of assembly operations. In both cases, opera- tors are charged with keeping those conveyor belts running efficiently and continually, while faced with constantly changing conditions in the input queue. As a game player, if I could, say, set up cer- tain conditions in the game, and then launch the simulation to test possible solutions, I could try strategies to optimize the ride's oper- ations. If I could reconstruct the ride, I would test optimizations in flow as well as guest expe- rience. I hope you understand my line of think- ing: A similar digital twin of your manufactur- ing floor would allow your team to explore ways to optimize operations. at might be in the form of determining which of your lines is the best choice for a particular job, or it might mean adjusting throughput rates to account for one particularly time-consuming step. It could even mean exploring changes to the setup of your line to decrease operator efforts. ere are so many ways to use this kind of digital twin. It's a freeing feeling, I'm sure, to experiment on the simulator, especially when it feels so risky to try those experiments directly on the manufacturing floor. I'm reminded of a story from the NASA Apollo missions. Armstrong and Aldrin were working long hours in the lunar lander sim- ulator. Now, in those days, the simulator was almost entirely a mechanical contraption, not necessarily a digital thing, but bear with me. Occasionally, as a landing attempt started to spin out of control, Aldrin would ask pilot Armstrong to abort the attempt. Armstrong, it's been said, oen wouldn't comply, and would try to recover. ose situations fre- quently turned into crashes. Apparently, Aldrin took issue with those failed attempts and talked to Armstrong, whose reply was something like, "When we're up there, we'll have one chance. We need to know exactly where the line is between success and fail- ure. We can only learn that by crashing in the simulator." is interaction was dramatized in Tom Hanks' HBO docudrama series from the late 1990s, "From the Earth to the Moon." If you've not watched that series, it's well worth your time. And that's my point: It's in the simula- tor where you can safely explore the bound- ary conditions and understand your processes better. In this issue, we introduce our topic through an interview with Don Kinard, a senior fellow at Lockheed Martin, and one of their experts on digital twin in the manufacturing space. If you haven't crossed paths with Don, he's been presenting occasionally at conferences on the different levels of digital twin in industry. Col- umnist Michael Ford weighs in on manufactur- ing simulation and, true to form for Michael, he's looking beyond the horizon with respect to factory simulation; it's a good read. We also connect with Phil Voglewede at Marquette University's Omron Advanced Automation Lab, as well as Cogiscan's Sylvain Perron. And we bring you perspective from digital twin players such as Critical Manufacturing, Instru- mental, and Cybord. All the issues of SMT007 Magazine are a joy to shepherd, and occasionally one particular issue will somehow stand above the rest. Maybe the content was particularly educational or compelling. For me, this is one of those stand- out issues. I thoroughly enjoyed chasing down these stories and I sincerely hope you enjoy reading them just as much. SMT007 Nolan Johnson is managing editor of SMT007 Magazine. Nolan brings 30 years of career experience focused almost entirely on electronics design and manufacturing. To contact Johnson, click here.