Emova Digital Twin

This project was developed as an innovation pilot in collaboration with EMOVA, the operator of the Buenos Aires metro system. The objective was to explore how digital twin concepts could meaningfully support rolling stock maintenance, starting from a single trainset and its associated maintenance processes, rather than from a fully defined technical specification.

From the outset, the work was organized as an iterative, client-embedded process. Instead of prescribing a solution upfront, we worked closely with EMOVA's technical and operational teams through user stories, workshops, and structured review sessions. This allowed the scope of the digital twin to evolve in response to real maintenance practices, constraints, and information needs, rather than abstract assumptions about technology.

The project combined two complementary components. The first was a digital twin of a single bogie, structured to gather and organize data generated during maintenance activities. The second was a digital process management platform, designed to formalize workflows, inspections, and decision points associated with preventive maintenance. Together, these components aim to improve process visibility, traceability, and consistency, enabling more informed operational management over time.

A defining aspect of this experience was the opportunity to work closely with real engineering operating data. Maintenance records, inspection logs, and operational information proved to be fragmented, heterogeneous, and often unstructured. Engaging directly with this data exposed the gap between idealized digital twin concepts and the reality of day-to-day operations, highlighting the need for future management systems to explicitly accommodate uncertainty, incompleteness, and evolving data sources rather than assuming clean, centralized inputs.

The project is ongoing. A next phase will focus on the development of AR/VR applications connected to the digital twin, with the goal of supporting training and preparation of maintenance staff. This will test whether immersive interfaces can translate technical information into actionable understanding at the point of need.