We are quickly moving in the digital age. Manufacturing and industrial companies are looking at how to keep track of your data. Managing the complexity of the information about modern products and complex product development and manufacturing processes can be difficult. ANd old habits of managing documents and Excel spreadsheets are dying hard.
Digital Thread is quickly becoming a place where manufacturing companies are looking to invest. The capabilities of digital thread technologies are expanding and PLM vendors are looking how to improve what they do about it.
The topic of digital continuity replacing old fashion file and document paradigms is coming. This trend is the most interesting trend that is coming to PLM technologies. In a nutshell, it means that the focus on individual productivity is replaced with the need to think more about collaboration and communication between multidisciplinary teams working together.
Another aspect of collaboration and digital continuity is a connection between organizations. Such capabilities of PLM tools are quickly becoming a key as companies increasingly demand collaboration with suppliers, tiers, and contractors to perform different works together.
Current PLM Architectures Have Shortcomings
While PLM vendors are looking for more collaboration and connections, the shortcomings of existing PLM architectures can quickly become a key bottleneck to achieving that. Here are the two fundamental shortcomings of existing PLM architecture – (1) file collaboration and (2) siloed databases.
The majority of production design tools heavily rely on file storage technology to provide data management and communication. Desktop tools are getting more sophisticated, but passing files around without proper data technology can quickly become a problem. Especially when the complexity of design and focus on multi-disciplinary design is increasing.
Traditional SQL databases, which are a foundation of existing PLM platforms are well developed and matured, but they were designed back in the 2000s and assumed siloed data modeling (database per company). It works for many use cases but fails when companies are trying to use these tools for communication between organizations and other tools.
Digital Gap
Some time ago, I had a chance to discuss the topic of digital transformation with one very large industrial company, which is specializing in the development of highly sophisticated autonomous vehicles with large supplier-based and advanced engineering activities using a variety of tools. The topic was how to organize and digital thread of information across multiple processes involving internal and external product development and lifecycle management.
What caught my special attention is how much the company processes are related to the current form of data representations used in design, engineering, and manufacturing. The conversation was mostly about how to make files produced by design environment (CAD) available to relevant contractors in the right schedule and revisions.
This conversation was not unique and I experience multiple such conversations in the past few months. All of them are focused on how to make the current “design media”, which is mostly file-based (CAD files) available across the network of company connections.
Unfortunately, such data experience and toolbox demonstrate how far are manufacturing companies from the point where engineers will be able to switch to their digital roles in product lifecycle management. It includes multiple tools to perform tasks such as engineering BOM management, supply chain management, and manufacturing BOM structure where the engineering department, contract manufacturers, and sales bill of materials are presented and analyzed to help future digital thread workers to do their tasks.
I call such a problem in the engineering and manufacturing environment a digital gap. This is a gap that exists in all manufacturing companies to make people start thinking and working differently.
Digital Thread and Bill of Information
Digital Thread is the focus of research by many analysts and industry software experts. My favorite one is CIMdata, which was spoken for a long time about the importance of the bill of information (BOI). it is an expansive, associative virtual data store built around the bill of material (BOM), which evolves from idea through life, and includes associated information that supports lifecycle processes, e.g., documented product requirements, early and final versions of the design, assembly and maintenance instructions, and virtual and physical test results.
These are but a few types of information that manufacturing companies want to manage as part of their digital thread, which builds on the BOI concept and has gained credibility in many industrial sectors.
In a recent survey, CIMdata asked industrial respondents about their plans to manage disparate knowledge as part of their digital thread.[1] The picture below represents the current state of the digital thread at our industrial respondents and their expansion plans over the next three years. Mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) is often managed using product data management (PDM) solutions, and both are rated highly. And the transition of the engineering BOM (eBOM) to the manufacturing BOM (mBOM) usually managed in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, was also highly rated.
Gartner’s research echoes the same topic, but takes it to the next level – There are multiple digital threads and each of which is contextual to the organization and its processes. The organization can also have multiple digital threads depending on what they do. These digital threads are extremely important for enterprise process integration. Marc Halpern of Gartner in his presentation at CIMdata PLM Roadmap 2020 presented the future of digital thread with the following subject- “Digital Thread: Be Careful What You Wish For, It Just Might Come True.”. Halpern referred to “digital nets” that can combine and connect digital threads that evolve over time. According to Gartner, it is a process that increasingly happening in many organizations these days as a result of digital transformation and M&A activities.
Look for Simplification, But Avoid Simple Solutions
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. If you’re looking to solve all data management problems using Excel, everything you do will have limitations of spreadsheets. And manage a product development and manufacturing process is hard. It doesn’t fit the Excel paradigm and it hurts. Here is the reason why you cannot use a simple solution to complex problems.
Simple solutions for complex problems usually fail because the problem demands you to acknowledge that complexity exists. Many engineers and organizations I was talking to refuse to accept such complexity and keep trying to solve the problem by applying “it is just Excel export” to get it done. Many organizations lack a conscious management understanding that product development requires technical and IT skills and it requires knowledge and tools. They are looking for how to improve the production and process with no cost, software, computers, and human resources
Don’t try to solve complex problems by breaking them into simple pieces. You will lose the problem and your solution won’t be accepted in the best-case scenario. In the worst-case scenario, you will create a new (sometimes bigger problem) that will require more effort and cost to solve.
By bringing “Excel lists” to solve the problem of data and process management, you ignore some very fundamental rules and dependencies – data is complex, and the changes are continues and involve multiple people and organizations. What seems like a “simple export” will end up with the huge cost of mistakes, missed delivery time, increased cost, and frustration.
Start your digital transformation from the ground up by analyzing data silos, processes and how to bring them all together to create a single product lifecycle management process to support all stages of the product development process and support.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
The concept of the digital thread has become important to many industries, expanding well beyond its roots in discrete manufacturing.
- The Bill of Materials (BOM) is at the core of the digital thread, and the nexus for information that manufacturing companies want to associate, which evolves as the idea of managing products from its inception through life.
- Cloud-native and multi-tenant architectures are solving the gap that exists in legacy PLM tools that were limited technologically and also organizationally. The ability to connect data in the digital nets will drive the future development of enterprise technologies beyond the single company level.
- It is important to start the digital journey early because such a change won’t happen overnight and won’t come as one big bang. The digital transformation is a journey that includes acknowledgment of the companies that it is a complex problem to be solved.
It is a time to learn more about Digital Thread and the importance of how to manage Bill of Information by going beyond the current limitations of PLM tools.
Bio:
Oleg Shilovitsky is CEO and co-founder of OpenBOM™, entrepreneur, and blogger at Beyond PLM. Shilovitsky has been building software products for data management, engineering, and manufacturing for the past 20 years. He has developed PDM / PLM software and worked for companies such as SmarTeam, Dassault Systèmes, Inforbix (acquired by Autodesk), and Autodesk. Shilovitsky is the author of the popular blog (Beyond PLM) where he shares his thoughts and discusses various engineering and manufacturing software topics.
