Digital twins enable smarter products with IoT

26 August 2026 | Force Technology

• Food Processing
• Hygienic and food safety

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Food processing companies, as well as many other types of industrial companies, constantly rely on and have increased interest in monitoring and optimising their production line.

What is a digital twin?
A digital twin is a unique digital representation of a physical product, with all its main features and characteristics coupled to physical entity through sensors and often a IoT setup. Depending on the intended use and complexity of the physical entity the digital twin can vary a lot in complexity.

For the simple purely data-driven cases a simple 3D CAD model is supplemented with sensor data to give the user a basic insight in the performance and state of the asset. However, this is either a new concept or what is considered a true digital twin with all the promising and associated business opportunities.

For achieving a true digital twin, a layer of simulation and/or mathematical models, from e.g. high fidelity CAE tools is developed and implemented on top of the 3D CAD and sensor data, providing the possibility to model what-if-scenarios, advance in time, test and train before deployment among others. The large amount of data and insight, then open for training of AI and neural networks, for intelligent autonomous decision making. A level that few commercial digital twins are at today.

As all other products, it is also important to acknowledge that the digital twin can only provide the data and information for which it is designed and setup for. Including skilled expertise within digital twinning from the beginning is therefore highly recommendable.

Adding additional features and outputs to the digital twins afterwards can and will in most cases be easier than adding or changing physical components, but not as cheap as including it from the beginning. However, over complicating the digital twin can also challenge the business case in development cost and time, so balancing this an important aspect.