Digital Twin, Digital Thread, and Autonomous Systems

Space and defense companies are already grappling with present-day challenges such as how to build existing systems and platforms faster and on budget; how best to embrace the current wave of innovation to develop new, highly integrated and connected systems and products faster; the increased integration of mechanical, electrical, electronics and software systems into a single platform; and how to better support products once in service or deployed.

For the industry to survive in this increasingly challenging environment, space and defense companies must digitally transform their operations to become more productive, innovative, and collaborative. The key to their business transformation is digital transformation.

Space and defense companies and their supply chain partners must have a digital twin and digital threads to complete a digital transformation. A comprehensive digital twin enables a company to better predict product performance and production processes by analyzing, simulating, and verifying them before physical production begins. “Flying it before you build it” can significantly reduce development time and cost and speed up delivery of the final product.

At Scientific Florida, we are committed to the sweeping success of our space and defense customers, whether they are large established leaders or emerging startups. Our goal is to help achieve strategic objectives for accelerating new product innovation, focusing on digitization and sustainability. As a trusted partner for space and defense, Scientific Florida enables the continuous improvement of automation and collaboration across all domains, from engineering to operations to product maintenance.

Advanced Analytics, Forecasting, and Resilience Models

The infrastructure, utility, and energy sectors face significant disruptions from changing supply and demand and increasing regulation and competitive pressures. Market shifts offer new opportunities for value creation but require new capabilities and business models.

Utilities must not only solve these challenges, but they must do so while continuing to provide the high level of service that customers and regulators expect. To expand the capabilities of their current assets while preparing for tomorrow’s infrastructure, utilities are embarking on a complete digital transformation that includes changes in technology, processes, and culture.

Scientific Florida has helped many organizations generate greater efficiencies across their operational business units, significantly improve customer experience, and accelerate innovation to stay ahead of the competition in rapidly changing markets. Transforming operations and systems with digital technologies can create substantial value for infrastructure, utility, and energy companies, reducing operating expenses by up to 25 percent, translating into lower revenue requirements or higher profits. In addition, performance gains of 20 to 40 percent in safety, reliability, customer satisfaction, and regulatory compliance are also achievable.

Medicine, Agriculture, and Biotechnology

Life sciences focus on understanding and providing tangible benefits to living organisms such as plants, animals, and human beings — biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, biomedical technologies, healthcare technologies, botanical science and crop technologies, veterinary fields, environmental sciences, biomedical devices, research products and services.

Life sciences have accelerated in recent decades but are characterized by a high degree of unpredictability and imprecision. To leap forward, the field must become more predictable and precise. Therefore, actions must be aligned with insights we derive from data.

Scientific Florida is pioneering distributed computing to empower every person and organization in life sciences to achieve more by harnessing the power of 5G, IoT, cloud, and AI. We look forward to supporting the life science industry on its global transformation journey and sharing our expertise.

Industrial IoT and Robotics

Manufacturing is undergoing a major generational shift. Industry 4.0, the digitization and advancement of manufacturing processes and ecosystems will lead to more flexible, efficient, and sustainable production lines. 5G and Industrial IoT support this transformation by enabling manufacturing companies and their supply chain partners to leverage emerging technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, machine learning, and machine vision, to provide much better visibility into all aspects of their business.

AI-based analytics enables predictive maintenance, which is the foundation for reducing downtime and ensuring a high level of quality by detecting anomalies/faults at an early stage while the production process is still running, resolving problems before they occur.

Reliable data and quality control are prerequisites for industrial AI solutions. It is only then that AI can truly add value. As a pioneer in augmented operations technology, Scientific Florida offers various professional and managed services directly and through partners delivering value by enabling right-time decisions and closed-loop actions using Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation.

SDN and NFV

Two major trends in computing and networking architecture— software-defined networks (SDNs) and network function virtualization (NFV)— stand to radically reshape how communications service providers (CSPs) operate and provide opportunities to streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve service.

These approaches are real and ripe today, already adopted broadly for computing needs in various industries. The vision is of simplicity and can position CSPs for a more digital, consumer-driven future.

Many CSPs want to adapt to the new landscape but remain cautious — recognizing that the network should never be down and realizing that detailed planning is required for transitioning to a new environment.

The real value of SDN/NFV capabilities resides in how companies choose to commercialize them and intertwine them throughout business systems support, extending to billing, policy, and analytics functions. Scientific Florida has analyzed how media and telecom can exploit new opportunities and overcome challenges resulting from the dynamic regulatory, technological, and competitive environment.

Supply Chain 4.0: fast, flexible, and efficient

Supply chain investments can help to respond quickly to changing customer demand, which has a real impact on financial performance. Strategic supply chain investments correlate with strong financial results. An average $10 billion organization can expect a $70 million improvement in pre-tax profit (EBT) and a potential $85 million reduction in costs.

To be successful in a digital transformation, however, it is important that supply chains maintain their traditional strengths (reliability, predictability, quality) while allowing for innovation (greater use of automation, faster response to changing needs, greater transparency throughout the supply chain).

Scientific Florida helps combine traditional and digital methods of supply chain management and outlines the steps to be taken to increase supply chain impact and become competitively differentiated.

The Future of Connectivity

Connectivity is the mother of digitalization. An increasing number of connected vehicles, machinery, and wireless IoT devices make disruptive business models at all conceivable. There is no “one size fits all” solution for connectivity needs.

A vast 5G IoT ecosystem is emerging with the right trade-offs between speed, latency, and cost, with networks serving billions of connected devices. According to GSMA, the number of 5G connections is expected to grow from 10 million at the end of 2019 to 1.8 billion in 2025!

Scientific Florida’s network strategy, assessment, and integration services help organizations redefine their network infrastructure based on new technologies such as (private) 5G, software-defined networking (SDN), and virtual network functions (NFV).

Process Automation and Knowledge Discovery

AI can empower all people to achieve more, not just developers and data scientists. Gartner predicts that by 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value globally. Most of this will come from business users and subject matter experts working with AI.

At Scientific Florida, we’re working to ensure that any user can achieve more with AI from the top floor to the shop floor. It should not require a background in data science to benefit from these experiences.

We believe AI should be used to enhance, not replace, human capabilities. The right AI tools will help employees better apply their expertise and complement it with AI-powered insights, making them more innovative and effective.

Cloud and Edge Computing

Most organizations will soon need to adopt a hybrid cloud approach, as much of the value of the cloud will be difficult to capture without transforming the IT/OT infrastructure that underpins the cloud business model. A well-designed infrastructure can rapidly expand access to new services and products, speed up time to market while reducing operating costs, allowing a business to unleash its innovation potential.

With the increase in connected devices and the need for real-time decision making with minimal latency, computing power is shifting from the cloud to the edge. Because decisions do not need to be made in the cloud, edge computing provides local data analytics in real-time for devices ranging from remote oil drilling equipment to autonomous vehicles, digital signage, wearable health devices and more.

Scientific Florida helps customers create exceptional value by putting distributed infrastructure at the heart of their business. The client’s business needs are placed at the center, and industry-specific solutions are developed to leverage the perfect blend of cloud and edge computing to benefit the client instantly.

Digital Twins and 3D/4D Printing

Process virtualization happens when a physically-based process is migrated to a virtual environment. A digital twin is a digital representation of an object in the real world, such as a machine, business process, or place. It is used to catalog the object’s properties, dimensions, and components to gain insights and predict its behavior under various conditions to help create better products, optimize operations and costs, and create breakthrough customer experiences.

Modeling and creating a digital representation of an environment can be difficult for even the most sophisticated enterprises. Scientific Florida makes this easy and facilitates customers to model an environment and then bring these digital twins to life – scalable and secure. Businesses can connect assets such as IoT devices and existing enterprise systems to create a single source of truth, break down silos that previously impeded insights, and provide a robust platform to build dynamic business logic.

Thrust Architecture and Block Chain

Cloud applications and the mobile workforce have redefined the security perimeter. Employees are bringing their own devices and working remotely. Applications and data are moving from on-premises to hybrid and cloud environments, and partners outside the corporate network need access.

Today, organizations need a new security model that more effectively adapts to the complexity of the modern environment, embraces the mobile workforce, and protects people, devices, applications, and data wherever they are located. This is the core of Zero Trust. Zero Trust presumes that everything within the system is untrustworthy and always assumes violation, explicitly verifies, and restricts user access with the least privileges.

Scientific Florida’s Zero Trust approach spans the entire digital asset. It serves as an integrated security philosophy and end-to-end strategy, deploying Zero Trust controls and technologies across six fundamental elements: identities, devices, applications, data, infrastructure, and network.