Hexagon and OSIsoft Collaborate on Enhancing Digital Twins for Industry with HxGN SDx® Connector

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., and SAN LEANDRO, Calif. – Hexagon's PPM division, the leading global provider of engineering software for the design, construction and operation of plants, ships and offshore facilities, announces the availability of HxGN SDx^® Connector for OSIsoft to simplify and accelerate the process of creating, deploying and using industrial-scale digital twins.

HxGN SDx is a platform for creating digital twins from multiple data streams to improve asset health, reduce maintenance costs, and improve overall performance at chemical facilities, oil and gas operations and other industrial plants across the process industries. OSIsoft's PI System is a global leading platform for managing and curating data from equipment, assets, plants and other critical operations. The SDx Connector for OSIsoft effectively serves as a bridge between the two technologies, interfacing historical and real-time data from the PI System into Hexagon's models to provide plant managers, executives and engineers greater visibility while reducing the time and expense of data preparation.

"The SDx Connector for OSIsoft is the latest step in our strategy to make it easier for organizations to both create digital twins as well as use them across their enterprises. We want to give them a single version of the truth," said Jaclyn Arnold, Hexagon PPM Vice President, Owner Operator Solutions. "Our collaboration with OSIsoft provides a feature-rich presentation layer for existing manufacturing data with the context into engineering and design to drive daily and strategic operational decisions."

Digital twins – virtual models of real-world phenomena that can combine real-time data streams with CAD/CAM models, pricing forecasts, weather information, maintenance and equipment logs, and other sources of information into a cohesive whole – will become pervasive in industry as companies expand their IoT initiatives. Digital twins will also become a medium for breaking down data silos between internal groups or sharing data between manufacturers, service providers and end users. The research firm IDC predicts that by 2024, 50% of manufacturers will network product and asset digital twins into digital twin ecosystems for a system-level view of their business and a 5% reduction in the cost of quality.

"The appeal of digital twin technology is obvious. The challenge is in developing the technology and best practices to accelerate adoption and spur innovation," said Bry Dillon, Vice President of Cloud, Channels and Community at OSIsoft. "We're very excited to work with Hexagon PPM to help establish a foundation for our mutual customers to start to integrate digital twin concepts into their operations."

Customers are already praising this new collaborative effort.

"The combined Hexagon and OSIsoft solutions are a major part of pushing our business to the next level," said Michael Fry, President & CEO, Deepwater Subsea. "Before this combination we were pulling all the PI System tags to match what was on the P&IDs. We can now pull up the P&IDs in SDx, click on a piece of equipment and have the trends from the PI tags appear on the same screen.

"To me it's completely game-changing to have all this information readily available on one screen. This is the first time an end user can go to one place and get all the operations, maintenance, engineering and process data they need to do their duties. By having all this information readily available in a digital twin, I believe this is an industry first for the oil and gas industry, where it has been difficult to monitor remote assets and equipment in dangerous areas."

Learn more about this breakthrough digital solution for the process industries here.