Digital twins in glassmaking have moved past the demonstration phase. That is good news for adoption and creates a new set of problems for the people who have to keep them running.
Data decay
A twin drifts the moment the plant changes something. Most sites we visited have no process for revalidating, which means their models are quietly losing their value. The fix is unglamorous: a scheduled review with a named owner.
Model ownership
The uncomfortable question at several plants was who is accountable when the model is wrong. Usually nobody, which is why it is used only for display.
Where the value is real
Rehearsing a setpoint change before committing it to a furnace. That single use case has paid for more implementations than the visualisation ever did.
