Driving Innovation

In the chemicals industry, adopting new production equipment carries substantial financial and operational risk. Novel machinery requires significant capital investment, and any misconfiguration or unexpected failure can disrupt interconnected production lines, create safety hazards, and trigger costly downtime. This chemical manufacturer faced a tension common to process industries: the pressure to innovate and expand throughput was tempered by the consequences of getting it wrong. Without a way to test and validate new equipment configurations before physical deployment, the status quo meant either accepting slow, incremental change or exposing operations to unacceptable disruption risk.

The manufacturer partnered with Rockwell Automation to implement a Digital Twin environment using the Emulate3D platform alongside Studio 5000 Logix Designer and a CompactGuardLogix safety controller on the Stratix 5700 network infrastructure. The digital twin created a virtual replica of proposed production equipment, allowing engineers to simulate machine behavior, test control logic, and validate safety configurations in software before any physical hardware was installed. This approach enabled the team to iterate on equipment design and programming in a risk-free environment, catching issues early in the design cycle. The simulation integrated directly with the real PLC programming environment, ensuring that validated virtual logic could be deployed to physical hardware with minimal rework.

The digital twin implementation is projected to deliver measurable operational improvements at full production scale:

• +15% throughput increase expected once the validated equipment enters full production
• Improved floor space utilisation — better asset placement decisions made during simulation reduce physical footprint waste
• Reduced disruption risk — production line interdependencies were mapped and tested virtually, protecting existing output during equipment commissioning
• Enhanced worker safety — safety control logic was validated in simulation, giving operators better-defined process boundaries on the factory floor

The virtual commissioning approach also compressed the timeline from design to deployment, accelerating time to market for the new production capability.

• Simulate before you commission: Digital twins allow control logic and safety configurations to be fully validated before physical installation, eliminating a major source of costly rework.
• Safety validation is a primary use case: In chemicals, where process uptime and worker safety are tightly coupled, running safety controller logic through simulation is as valuable as functional testing.
• Integration with real engineering tools matters: The Emulate3D and Studio 5000 pairing means virtual-to-physical handoff is seamless — validated code deploys directly, avoiding translation errors.
• Digital twins de-risk capital decisions: By proving out equipment performance before purchase commitment, manufacturers can innovate with greater confidence and reduced financial exposure.