Why you need to invest in heroes to build Digital Twins

Successful Digital Twins should be enablers within your organisation, increasing safety/productivity and encapsulating unique business knowledge. All too often Industry 4.0 and Digital Twins are the latest band wagon organisations jump upon given the industry press they get. They are seen as a silver bullet to solve each and every problem an organisation has and a great way to access funding — then outsourced?!

My experience shows that without understanding the unique knowledge/key differentiation your organisation has this knowledge is all to often leaked to vendors/partners and an opportunity lost.

If you truly believe (and understand how) digital twins will make a difference why would you spend the time teaching a partner/vendor the secrets of your business when you should be nurturing, building and constantly improving this internally?

The companies that are recognising this opportunity are investing heavily in the skill sets needed to monetise this: engineering, science and software skills. This is why you need to have a clear strategy to build, retain and capitalise on this expertise internally and why your focus should be on making these internal business experts the heroes within your organisation.