The Digital Thread in Aerospace & Defense, Current State, and Future Direction
A Complimentary CIMdata Educational Webinar with James Roche, Aerospace & Defense Practice Director, CIMdata
22 September 2022
11:00 EDT | 08:00 PDT | 17:00 CEDT
Replay Webinar About our Speaker
Those responsible for planning and implementing digital thread solutions frequently experience many or most of the following problems:
- It is difficult to position a digital thread project, e.g., requirements flow down or engineering bill of material (eBOM) to manufacturing BOM (mBOM) integration, within the context of a broader enterprise digital thread strategy.
- Lack of confidence in the digital thread capabilities claimed by the PLM software providers
- Lack of insight into the digital thread strategies and capability timelines of the PLM solution provider community.
- Lack of real-world insight into the current state of digital thread implementations within industry, i.e., maturity, strengths, and gaps.
- Lack of real-world insight into digital thread investment trends within industry, i.e., identified pain points and opportunities, investment drivers, and priorities.
The Digital Thread, in various incarnations, has been a core element of the 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 myriad 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 for industries with complex products, such as aerospace & defense (A&D).
In response, leaders in the A&D industry are starting to implement 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 actual value achieved. This lack of real data is a barrier to broader investment within industry. On the other hand, solution providers lack insight into current state and future investment drivers within industry that is crucial to their solution strategies and roadmaps. This webinar presents a framework for characterizing the state of digital thread realization and initial results of collaborative research between a group of A&D OEMs and PLM solution providers to examine the current state and future trends of digital thread implementation within the industry.
What will I learn?
- You will learn about the fundamental concepts of digital threads within an enterprise digital thread strategy.
- You will learn about a framework for characterizing the current state and future trends in digital thread realization.
- You will gain an understanding about the maturity of digital thread capability available in commercial software.
- You will learn about our initial research findings regarding the current state of digital thread implementations.
- You will learn about our initial research findings regarding future digital thread investment.
Who should attend?
Anyone with responsibility or interest in product program integration, systems engineering, PLM program planning, or more generally in digitalization or digital thread would find the presentation interesting. Specific roles would include:
- Product program managers & planners
- Systems engineers
- PLM program and project managers
- PLM program planners
- PLM solution architects
- PLM domain architects
- PLM business analysts
- Digitalization strategists
- Corporate enterprise architects
- Corporate IT planners
During the webinar you’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions about the topics discussed.