Enabling future customer experiences and accelerating product development
What we do
Strategy
Our approach involves defining your organization’s digital twin target-future state, developing and quantifying the business case, and creating and pressure testing your digital twin roadmap.
Technology
Our expertise supports the technical definition of the data architecture and tool chain for a broader product lifecycle management and digital twin transformation. We guide the development of machine-learning-based surrogate models to optimize product design, and partner with you to connect the multiple advanced simulation models that deliver a system twin.
Implementation
We work with you to manage your program and steer your transformation and implementation of prioritized use cases. Maximum value can be delivered when we help you to build organization-wide digital twin capabilities, supported by change-management expertise to help users thrive in the new working model.
WHY USE A DIGITAL TWIN
Fulfilling new customer expectations
Helps you develop products tailored to your consumers’ needs for lighter, faster, lower cost, or sustainable products by supplementing your development efforts with real-time usage information. Product digital twins also address customer expectations for enhanced operation, such as live updating of functionality through over-the-air updates and connectivity to a broader ecosystem of related products and services.
Managing product complexity
End-to-end linking of all product data in one standard data repository across the full product lifecycle drives transparency across the entire value chain. Product digital twins combine part and material definitions with manufacturing and in-service data. This allows for higher levels of modularization and enables product managers to make data-driven decisions about product portfolios and lifecycles.
Technology development
Accelerates the pace of future product development by automating the process of testing and iterating new designs and increases optimization capability by unlocking the potential to test new design frontiers.
Featured Video
Americas’ Cup – Using AI to make Emirates Team New Zealand fly
Creating an award-winning sailboat requires not only great engineering, but also the ability to test and iterate on boat designs rapidly. See how the McKinsey-built AI sailor enabled Emirates Team New Zealand to run design simulations around the clock, delivering a tenfold increase in the number of designs tested before landing on the winning formula.
Examples of our work

Optimizing the design of turbines
We partnered with the technical team of a client in the energy space to establish a repeatable process for optimizing the design of custom turbines. By building and implementing a deep, learning-based surrogate model of the turbine, we enabled the team to test one million additional design iterations in 75 percent of the original time before selecting the most effective version.

Addressing portfolio complexity through digital twin
A major automotive OEM was observing an increase in portfolio complexity due to a growing number of derivatives and variants. We helped them design and implement the concept of the digital twin, with a virtual replica of each product across the entire lifecycle. Core to this approach was a streamlined data layer, which increased the visibility across the value chain while also reducing the number of interfaces to internal systems. The result was a decline in portfolio complexity, the possibility to flash new functionality onto the cars in the field, and a decrease in data provisioning and usage costs. These changes translated to two percent EBITDA-cost improvements and a safeguarding and enablement of ten percent of revenue.

Digitizing component development on industrials and electronics topics
We helped a major aerospace company define a strategy and execution plan to build a multisystem digital twin that could simulate dynamic testing in various conditions. This resulted in a 12-month reduction in product verification and validation time along with a 15-25 percent decrease in overall time to market.
Featured Insights
McKinsey Direct
On the brink of a revolution? Engineering simulation in the age of AI
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The adoption of advanced simulation tools is accelerating in the automotive sector, but some tasks risk getting stuck in the slow lane.
McKinsey Direct
Spend digital twin: A tool for volatility
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Spend digital twins could revolutionize procurement by handing negotiation power back to buyers—providing a clear and real-time view of fair market price.
McKinsey Direct
Accelerating innovation: The potential of digital twins in medtech R&D
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When the stakes are high and regulation is necessarily complex, using digital twins can enable better, faster innovation in medtech. Unlocking the value available can be hard, but getting the transformation right can help organizations create better performing products.
Article
Digital twins: The next frontier of factory optimization
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Digital twins are revolutionizing how decisions are made within factories, and forward-thinking manufacturers are getting ahead of the technology curve to drive efficiency.
Article
Digital twins: The key to smart product development
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Digital-twin technologies can help companies create better products faster. They could transform the work of product development too.
Featured Capability
Innovation & Learning Centers
Our Innovation & Learning Centers for advanced operations can help your company advance to the forefront of operational excellence.
Featured experts

Kimberly Borden
Senior PartnerChicago
Serves clients in the Aerospace & Defense and Automotive & Assembly Practices, focusing on strategy, operations, and transformational...

Hannes Erntell
Senior PartnerStockholm
Advises companies primarily in the tech, telecom, and industrial sectors on themes related to growth, product development, operations,...

Anna Herlt
Senior PartnerMunich
Advises companies as they seek to optimize the value of their research and development investments, particularly within the automotive...

Mithun Kamat
PartnerDallas
Helps aerospace, defense, industrial, and technology companies with strategy, product, margin expansion, and technology-enabled...

Alessandro Mattozzi
PartnerStockholm
Helps global industrial groups improve their products through value-centered design and cost-efficient operations

Bernhard Mühlreiter
PartnerVienna
Helps companies in the mobility and industrial space to navigate disruptions, shape tech-enabled performance programs, and reinvent...