Prashanth Mysore, Senior Director, Global Strategic Business Development; Rob Driessen, Services Director, Rail Digital Transformation; Phil Barrett, Head of Rail Business, ANZ; Tony Rakuljic, Senior Client Executive – Rail; and Biswajyoti Shome, Industry Process Consultant Senior Manager, Dassault Systèmes
This article is based on insights from the panel discussion held during the ‘Sustainable Rail Operations with Virtual Twins’ webinar on August 1, 2024. You can watch the replay of the webinar here.
Virtual twin technologies are key to faster digital transformation in rail as the rail renaissance gathers pace. To begin with, the use of virtual twins in manufacturing helps enhance the design of trains to make rail transport a competitive option. In fact, rail companies are experimenting with virtual twin technologies to bring enhancements and efficiencies in the entire rail transport value chain, not just manufacturing.
Although rail operators realise the value of virtual twin technologies, companies in the Asia Pacific region are at various levels of proficiency with regard to digitalisation and the acquisition of skills required to accelerate digital transformation using virtual twin technologies. How do rail operators accelerate digital transformation using virtual twin technologies?
First of all, a progressive digital transformation journey begins with the assessment of current processes to identify where digitalisation can drive transformation across operations. The virtual simulation capabilities of virtual twins can model and optimise current rail operations. The simulation capabilities also help simulate various scenarios around energy usage to achieve higher energy efficiency and meet sustainability objectives.
Virtual twin technologies help design and develop a more sustainable infrastructure. They also support retrofitting existing infrastructure to improve their efficiency.
The virtual twin technologies are also key to ensuring that rail infrastructure companies can streamline operations and infrastructure utilisation to maximise value and reduce time to value. However, challenges such as legacy infrastructure technologies, resistance to change, the high initial investment and ensuring interoperability of various technologies can stall digital transformation initiatives.
Attracting and enabling a digitally empowered workforce
Successful digital transformation requires the rail workforce to be adequately trained to navigate through the functions of virtual twin technologies to maximise their value. Currently organisations in the Asia Pacific south region face major challenges to acquire the skills required to embrace the rail renaissance. The technologies embedded in Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform such as virtual and augmented reality support enhanced training by providing an immersive and hands-on experience in processes essential to increase efficiency and safety.
The embedding of virtual twin technologies in the rail value chain from manufacturing to scheduling and to maintenance is key to attracting the digital native workforce into the industry and ensuring that they can seamlessly integrate into the work environment.
At the same time, the virtual twin technologies are required to manage the skills and competencies of the existing workforce too, to ensure their efficiency and productivity while meeting all safety requirements. Similarly, with the planning, scheduling and real time monitoring capabilities of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, organisations can optimise workforce schedules and rationalise workloads considering all the constraints such as regulations, skills, and work-life balance.
Optimising operations and reducing time to value
The platform delivers the real time visibility to ensure immediate adjustments are made to schedules to reduce disruptions in the operations. Dassault Systèmes’ clients have benefited from the efficiency introduced by the platform through less cancellations, reduced overtime and increased on-time performance. The planning process itself is a lot more streamlined in such a way that it results in better compliance with labour standards prevalent in the region.
The virtual twin technologies are also key to ensuring that rail infrastructure companies can streamline operations and infrastructure utilisation to maximise value and reduce time to value. However, challenges such as legacy infrastructure technologies, resistance to change, the high initial investment and ensuring interoperability of various technologies can stall digital transformation initiatives.
Rail operators are required to adopt a strategic approach to digital transformation to reduce time to value. This means the digital transformation strategy should be aligned with business objectives while considering industry challenges.
The strategy should have clear and actionable long-term goals. Continuous training and support is required to build digital competencies in the workforce which will reduce resistance to change and ease the adoption of digital technologies.
A digital ROI analysis that focuses on quick wins and areas with high potential helps keep the digital transformation strategy aligned with long term goals. This approach will help reduce uncertainties and accelerate the time to value. In terms of people, process and technology, partnering with the right technology partners is essential to ensure interoperability between the systems while also ensuring that the digitalised processes actually work for the users.
Leveraging data: Understanding right technologies the key
It is key to understand which technologies can provide the best data points to drive digital transformation and the typical challenges that might occur while using data intelligence or insights for enhanced decision making. Virtual twin technologies are used to create virtual models of physical assets, simulate scenarios to improve performance, predict maintenance needs, and plan and execute maintenance tasks.
AI and ML provide virtual twins the ability to adapt and learn from real-time data sets to dynamically influence operations as scenarios change. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a unified cloud-based environment that supports data-driven modelling, simulation and integration while also supporting seamless collaboration and sharing of models across multiple disciplines such as engineering, maintenance and operations. Using virtual twin-based models, rail operators can support traceability with a common thread across user communities which ultimately leads to increased adoption of digital technologies to drive digital transformation.
An interconnected digital infrastructure helps bolster operations continuity and reduce volatility. The use of AI and automation and adoption of real time monitoring enhances the digital connectivity to ensure the resilience of operations.
Embracing digital technologies from the beginning of a project will serve organisations well in ensuring continuity and resilience in operations. The virtual twins provide the deep visibility to identify accurate solutions to slowing traffic or delays and disruption.
Dassault Systèmes helps accelerate digital transformation
Dassault Systèmes’ assessment-led discoveries help identify the use cases within the business that need to be solved through digital transformation. Our onshore and offshore teams can work collaboratively with client teams while cloud-based solutions deliver scalability and flexibility which help accelerate the implementation of digital transformation projects. Virtual twin experiences based on virtual twins-as-a-service model help create accelerated paths to value bringing together diverse communities and data across different domains.
Dassault Systèmes helps contextualise legacy systems and data through collaborative tools to enable seamless implementations of digital transformation projects. Our collaborative tools help integrate existing tools without the need to replace them while also streamlining planning and optimizing processes.
For companies interested in deploying virtual twin technologies, Dassault Systèmes can help model infrastructure, supply chain initiatives, or operations using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s animation and simulation capabilities while bringing in model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to quickly realise the true value of virtual twins.
Our execution management methodologies help organisations smoothen their path to execution for day of operations planning. Finally, the contextualisation of data from various sources, for example, upgraded old infrastructure, turbo charges decision automation. Starting small and realising value in calibrated steps is key to achieving the stakeholder buy-in which is essential to successfully completing digital transformation projects.