Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN) shares dropped over 1.23% to trade at $270.94 as the company is collaborating with Mars, a global leader in chocolate, food, and pet care goods and services, to use artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, edge technologies, and digital twins to change and modernize its global production processes.
Since late 2020, Accenture and Mars have been testing digital twins for Mars’ manufacturing operations. Virtual representations of equipment, goods, or processes are known as digital twins. They can forecast and optimize industrial processes and equipment performance, from dependability to quality to energy efficiency, when fed real-time data. Digital twins, when applied to Mars’ production plants, will allow the company to simulate and test the outcomes of product and factory improvements before investing time and resources in the actual environment.
The firms used a digital twin to eliminate instances of overfilling packaging, which is a major issue in the food sector. The digital twin provided Mars with a bird’s-eye view of the manufacturing lines at one of its Illinois operations. The twin streamed sensor data from production machines into a predictive analytics model, allowing factory line operators to monitor and adapt the filling process in real time. Following the successful test, Accenture and Mars rolled out the solution throughout the United States and built comparable solutions for its pet care business in Europe and China.
Accenture and Mars will collaborate under the new partnership to apply digital twin technologies and models to the company’s manufacturing plants throughout the world. This will provide real-time insights on present and predictive performance to Mars plant line operators. Over the next three years, Mars intends to apply them to hundreds of use cases.
“Our collaboration with Accenture, combined with our partnership with Microsoft, enables us to scale digital twin technology to achieve this goal, delivering not only significant cost savings and sustainability, but also preparing our manufacturing operations for the future of work,” said William Beery, vice president and global CIO at Mars Wrigley.
