Digital twins cut manufacturing team size by 40% at Texas panel maker

Eplan and Rittal’s digital twin system reduced engineering team size at an Odessa, Texas oil and gas panel producer by 40% within a year.

Eplan and Rittal implemented a digital twin system for R&D Specialties, a UL-certified panel builder in Odessa, Texas that serves the oil and gas industry since 1983. The system reduced R&D Specialties’ team size from 14 to 8 people within one year of using Eplan Electric P8, Eplan Pro Panel, and Eplan Data Portal with Rittal’s Perforex machining center and Wire Terminal automation. This implementation achieved a 40% productivity gain at the company, eliminating manual handoffs between design, sourcing, and fabrication. The digital twin created a single source of truth for project data across engineering, sourcing, and fabrication, while Rittal’s US-based manufacturing centers enabled local production to meet custom fabrication timelines.

The system’s efficiency directly lowers manufacturing waste and costs for the panels R&D Specialties produces. By streamlining the design-to-fabrication workflow, it enables cheaper goods for consumers—specifically in the oil and gas sector where custom panels are common. This matters because reduced production friction means more affordable, reliable panels for infrastructure that supports energy systems.

This case shows how digital twins can scale cost savings in manufacturing. However, results are limited to R&D Specialties’ oil and gas projects in Odessa, Texas. The source text identifies this as sponsored content (August 24, 2026), and the productivity gain is measured through team size reduction, not direct cost metrics. What to watch: Whether similar systems can replicate these savings across other manufacturing sectors without oil and gas-specific constraints.

Source: Manufacturing Dive