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Specifying the key decisions / interventions that your digital twin will make and the information needed to support them
A challenge that, as the IMF team, we would like to bring to the forefront:
The starting point of a digital twin (DT) project is an original issue or purpose, a use case or use cases the project needs to address.
Once the original purpose for the DT project is outlined, we have found that a challenging step for organisations is to define the information requirements that will ensure that the DT (or DTs) resulting from the project collects the right information and information of the right quality to support the decisions/interventions it must take/make to be fit for purpose.
We believe that the following process-model based methodology provides an efficient route to specifying these information requirements:
- identify the core process(es), lifecycle processes (for instance periodic lifecycles like budgeting, asset lifecycles …), common processes (procurement, recruitment …) involved in the use case. You will likely need a DT (or DTs) of these core and lifecycle processes (or phases of them) and/or of the assets involved.
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develop the models of these processes to at least the level where you can identify the key decisions/interventions
- specify the decisions/interventions that the DT will take/make
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develop and document the requirements for the information needed to support these decisions/interventions
- specify the processes that the DT will use to create/capture the required data
Processes across organisations within a same industry and even across industries bear many commonalities. We believe that organisations would greatly benefit from the provision of standard process models that could be tailored to their specific context, helping them to identify the right information requirements for their DT projects.