CIMdata’s 2023 PLM Market & Industry Forum series theme is “The Digital Thread: Powering Business Transformation.” At this industry-leading Forum, CIMdata will frame the digital thread and discuss the issues faced by industrial users. Event sessions provide critical information to the PLM Software and Service community enabling them to respond to new and evolving requirements. Learn more about the 2023 PLM Market & Industry Forum here.
CIMdata continues to investigate many topics of interest to the PLM Economy. One area we are currently focusing on is the digital thread, a topic important enough to be featured as a stand-alone topic on our 2023 PLM Market & Industry Forum agenda. Here is some current thinking on how we are developing that session. This is the first of three blogs on this topic, and takes a look at "the promise."
Digital Thread’s Rise to Prominence
The Digital Thread, in various incarnations, has been a core element of the product lifecycle management (PLM) vision for decades. The concept of automated linkage of multiple representations of a product, each tuned to the needs of various creators and consumers along the lifecycle, is very powerful. Until recently, tracing these linkages has been primarily a manual process, extracting product information from various heterogeneous systems and relating them in ad hoc reports. But now, with recent advances in commercial PLM solutions, the Digital Thread, with automated linkages and traceability, has become a practical possibility, even for industries with complex products, such as aerospace & defense (A&D).
In response, leaders in A&D and similar industries have implemented targeted digital thread solutions and envision expanding these solutions upstream and downstream throughout the product lifecycle. With the newness of this approach, there is not much available in the way of lessons learned or proof points of actual value achieved. This lack of real data is a barrier to broader investment. On the solution side, providers are constantly seeking additional insight into the current state and future investment drivers within industry, which is crucial to their solution strategies and roadmaps. CIMdata has recently completed a research project on behalf of the Aerospace and Defense PLM Action Group (AD PAG) member companies in collaboration with multiple PLM solution providers to understand the current state and future investment trends on the topic of the digital thread.
Digital Thread Realization
What is the Digital Thread, really? Is it really a thread in the sense of being able to string related artifacts together – requirements to design to manufacturing instructions to finished product to in-service performance record for that product? And at what level of specificity – for the whole product, a sub-system, a component, or a part? How does that work? And is it really a thread with a single strand running through the lifecycle from requirement to finished product in-service performance, as is often shown in illustrations?
The Digital Thread is commonly presented as a sequential flow mapped to the product lifecycle. Here we show the four principal product structure configurations in lifecycle sequence. In this representation, threads would run left to right between the objects in one structure to the next in line. But if we look at the derivative relationships between these structures, we see that the dependencies are not sequential.
And there are many other views of product structure that are relevant to various communities as they contribute their efforts throughout the product lifecycle. For example, organizational constructs are often created for presenting data to the creators and consumers in various roles along the lifecycle. These product structure configurations are intertwined as a web, not as a thread.
If you think that this looks like a lot, you are right. The key to success is to think big but focus on pieces of the total picture. Use cases are the pieces. They define the scope and the business value. Pick the piece, i.e., use case, to work on next based on business problems to be solved or opportunities to be captured. And as you build out piece by piece, keep in view that bigger landscape so that the pieces fit together.
The 2023 PLM Market & Industry Forum will be a live event in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, on March 30 and in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 4. A series of virtual-live events will follow, each held over two half-days designed to share the same information in the following geographies, India, China, and Japan.
Please let me know your thoughts on this topic by sharing them in the comments section of this blog!
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I hope to see you in Ann Arbor or Frankfurt!
Jim
