Digital twins are transforming how you operate physical assets by creating sophisticated virtual models and real-time digital replicas. These advanced technologies empower you to predict maintenance needs, optimize production processes, accelerate sustainability goals and achieve operational efficiency by reducing costs and improving output quality.

By 2026, 70% of industrial companies will have at least one digital twin in operation¹  and 75% of manufacturers already deploy digital twins with medium to high complexity.²  But unlocking their full potential depends on one thing: trusted, unified data.

Every moment, your equipment generates streams of sensor data — temperature, vibration, pressure — but raw signals alone don't tell the full story. Digital twins require extensive operational data and real-time data integration to function effectively. Without context-rich master data like asset location, service history, criticality and valid spare parts information, their predictive and optimization capabilities are limited and those numbers remain just noise.

Christian Farra, Practice Lead Supply Chain at Informatica, points out:
“Without master data, you have numbers — not knowledge.” He adds, “A digital twin without trusted data isn’t just limited — it can be dangerous. Missed faults, misplaced spare parts, uninformed teams and misclassified assets lead to costly downtime and inefficiencies.” 

If your data is trapped in fragmented silos across enterprise resource planning (ERP), computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, your digital twin won’t deliver the reliable insights you need.

Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) serves as the essential backbone that transforms fragmented and inconsistent asset data into a single, trusted golden record. It not only aggregates data but also connects real-time sensor signals with comprehensive asset specifications, detailed maintenance histories, supplier and warranty information and lifecycle events. Throughout this process, IDMC ensures strict data cleansing, validation and governance.

This unified data foundation addresses key challenges that often undermine digital twin initiatives: disparate sources such as ERP, CMMS and SCADA systems create data silos, inconsistent formats, duplicated or missing records and incomplete asset contexts. Without resolving these issues, your digital twins risk becoming inaccurate and unreliable, leading to missed predictive maintenance alerts, wrong spare parts orders, inefficient resource allocation and failures to meet ESG and regulatory requirements.

Farra highlights: “IDMC breaks down data silos, powering smarter predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, spare parts optimization and ESG compliance. This transforms digital twins from passive viewers into proactive AI-driven decision engines.”

By skillfully connecting and managing all relevant asset data, IDMC allows AI and machine learning algorithms to operate on consistent, validated data sets—ensuring that predictions and automated decisions are reliable and actionable. These key technologies, combined with data analytics, underpin the development process of digital twins, enabling simulation, modeling and real-time insights that support continuous improvement and deliver accurate, actionable information. (See Figure 1)

It empowers you to:

• Detect anomalies and predict failures before costly downtime
• Prioritize alerts intelligently based on asset criticality and operational impact
• Optimize spare parts inventory by linking assets to valid parts and suppliers
• Track and report on carbon footprint, energy usage and other ESG metrics with audit-ready data
• Automate workflows, such as triggering maintenance tickets or reordering parts, directly from the digital twin environment

Without a trusted data foundation like IDMC, even the most sophisticated digital twin technology will fall short because it simply cannot provide the accuracy, reliability and business context needed to drive real impact.

Imagine managing widely distributed renewable and gas assets globally, but struggling with scattered and inconsistent asset and supply chain data across multiple systems and spreadsheets. It becomes nearly impossible to get a single view of asset costs, delay detection, maintenance schedules or supply chain responsiveness.

By partnering with Informatica to build unified global asset and site referential systems, this leader:

• Gained real-time visibility into asset performance worldwide
• Allocated resources exactly where needed
• Cut maintenance costs and spare parts inventory by 20%
• Boosted on-time delivery by 30%
• Reduced unplanned downtime by 8%
• Improved supply chain responsiveness by 15%

With a trusted data foundation, they turned digital twins into daily operational advantages — enabling remote monitoring and the ability to monitor operations across global production systems. This generated valuable performance data that informed supply chain optimization and operational improvements, resulting in safer, cleaner and more efficient energy operations. 

Digital twins serve more than just operational purposes; integrating ESG metrics like carbon footprint, energy consumption and recyclability into your models enables you to meet increasing sustainability demands in a transparent and auditable manner. This integration is also a crucial component of digital transformation efforts, as organizations leverage real-time data and advanced analytics to optimize processes and drive innovation.

Farra stresses: “By integrating trusted ESG data into your digital twins, you empower your organization to meet stringent regulatory requirements and drive meaningful sustainable transformation.”

The digital twin market is exploding, projected to surpass $110 billion by 2028 with a CAGR over 60%³ Digital twin solutions are transforming business models in the manufacturing industry and beyond, enabling new revenue streams and operational efficiencies across sectors such as aerospace, automotive and healthcare. To lead in Industry 4.0, you need to start smart with a unified data foundation that ensures your digital twins deliver real-world, measurable impact.

Farra concludes: “Start smart — start with trusted data. That’s how your digital twins reduce risk, boost uptime and optimize costs.”

If you want to fully realize the potential of digital twins and enhance operations that are smarter, safer and more sustainable, start with reliable and unified asset data. Informatica’s IDMC provides the golden record foundation that fuels predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization, ESG compliance and much more.

Ready to turn your digital twins into intelligent decision engines? Let’s talk!
 

_{¹https://www.grandviewresearch.com/horizon/outlook/digital-twin-market-size/global
²https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/industrials-and-electronics/our-insights/digital-twins-the-key-to-smart-product-development#
³https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/digital-twin-market-225269522.html}