UPSIM

Most major industrial organizations employ numerical simulation in support of their engineering and business decision-making, where simulation is mainly intended to be applied for reducing efforts along the overall product lifecycle, within product development, its production and during operation. This indicates, that simply using numerical simulation for development, production and operation along the product lifecycle is no longer an essential and competitive differentiator between companies and industries. Furthermore, as Modelling & Simulation goes in parallel to real testing for final approval, real testing of currently envisioned smart systems will be temporally, practically and economically impossible. UPSIM addresses the fundamental problem of Modelling & Simulation credibility for unleashing the hidden potentials in simulation.

Digital Twin is one of the emerging technologies in discussion in almost all industrial sectors directly refers to the physical asset and allows it to be simulated, controlled and improved. A recent market study outlines that less than 1 % of physical machines and components “are modelled such that the models capture and mimic behaviour” today! UPSIM is aiming for Credible Digital Twins and will change this situation significantly with predictive capabilities, leading to an opening and the accessibility of multi-billion markets prospected like for virtual commissioning and predictive maintenance.

UPSIM addresses the problem by the introduction of four major innovations based on the concept of Simulation Governance: 

(1) Modelling & Simulation reference processes and a metric for determining the Digital-Twin Readiness Level, 

(2) collaboration patterns for efficient Digital Twin development, 

(3) Artificial-Intelligence enriched Hybrid Simulations for ensuring simulation-reality convergence and finally, 

(4) an infrastructure for the ‘chained’ identification of Credible Digital Twin simulation artefacts. The main project outcomes shall be made available via open access and an open source repository, for ensuring technology sustainability, a broad market-uptake and a long-term economical added value.

Proposed innovations will engage additional value streams and the emergence of new business models. The provision of credible and uniquely identified Simulation Apps via domain-specific marketplaces is instrumental to massive exploitation, as efficiency and speed of using Simulation is perhaps the primary factor impacting how frequently and widely simulation is conducted – Simulation Apps will definitely allow a much broader audience of non-specialists and occasional users to safely benefit from simulation.

UPSIM represents a Pan-European innovation action and the involvement of projects partners from seven countries, resulting from the effective interlinkage of several technology-specific hotspots within Europe. The consortium is complemented by scientific key persons, links to relevant standardization bodies and local industrial clusters for ensuring a smooth innovation provision and a rapid market-uptake as well. UPSIM partners covers complete value-chains within agriculture, healthcare, automotive and smart building domains for implementing UPSIM results in a multi-disciplinary and multi-domain fashion.

Link to the project website: https://www.upsim-project.eu/