Cohort Analysis in the Age of Digital Twins
To be actionable, Big Data and Data Science must get down to the level of the individual – whether the individual is a customer, physician, patient, teacher, student, coach, athlete, technician, mechanic or engineer. This is the “Power of One.” By applying data science to the growing wealth of human purchase, interaction and social engagement data, organizations can capture individual’s tendencies, propensities, inclinations, behaviors, patterns, associations, interests, passions, affiliations and relationships that drive business monetization opportunities (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Using Analytic Profiles to Capture and Monetize the “Power of One”
Analytic Profilesprovide a structure for capturing an individual’s behaviors and tendencies in a way that facilities the refinement and sharing of these digital assets across multiple business and operational use cases (see Figure 2).
But it isn’t just humans who develop behavioral tendencies. Cars, cranes, wind turbines, CT scanners, chillers, engines, motors, elevators and other “things” also develop unique tendencies, and that’s the concept behind Digital Twins.
A Digital Twin is a digital representation of an industrial asset that enables companies to better understand and predict the performance of things, uncover new revenue opportunities, and optimize the operations of the business. GEpopularized the Digital Twins concept to capture the asset’s detailed history (from design to build to maintenance to retirement/salvage) that can be mined to provide actionable insights into the product’s operations, maintenance and repair.
Digital Twins was selected by Gartner (“Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018”) as one of the top 10 strategic technology trends in 2018. To quote the article:
“Over time, digital representations of virtually every aspect of our world will be connected dynamically with their real-world counterpart and with one another and infused with AI-based capabilities to enable advanced simulation, operation and analysis. City planners, digital marketers, healthcare professionals and industrial planners will all benefit from this long-term shift to the integrated digital twin world.”
Furthermore, Digital Twins provide the foundation for an organization’s artificial intelligence foundation, and the creation of intelligent apps and things (see Figure 3).
