Last week I was happy to attend the PLM Roadmap / PDT Fall 2020 conference as usual organized by CIMdata and Eurostep. I wrote about the recent PI DX conference, which touched a lot on the surface of PLM and Digital Transformation. This conference is really a conference for those who want to understand the building blocks needed for current and future PLM.

In this conference, usually with approximately 150 users on-site, now with over 250 connected users for 3 (half) days. Many of us, following every session of the conference. As an active participant in the physical events, it was a little disappointing not to be in the same place with the other participants this time. The informal network meetings in this conference have always been special thanks to a relatively small but stable group of experts.  Due to the slightly reduced schedule, there was this time, less attention for some of the typical PDT-topics most of the time coming from Sweden and related to sustainability.

The conference’s theme was Digital Thread—the PLM Professionals’ Path to Delivering Innovation, Efficiency, and Quality and might sound like a marketing statement.  However, the content presented was much more detailed than just marketing info. The fact that you watched the presentation on your screen made it an intense conference with many valuable details.

Have a look at the agenda, and I will walk you through some of the highlights for me. As there was so much content to discuss, I will share this time part 1. Next week, in part 2, you will see the coherence of all the presentations.

As if there was a Coherent Thread.

Digital Twin, It Requires a Digital Thread

Peter Bilello, President & CEO, CIMdata, ‘s keynote with the title Digital Twin, It Requires a Digital Thread was immediately an illustration of discussing reality.  When I stated at the Digital Twin conference in the Netherlands that “Digital Twins do not run on Documents“, it had the same meaning as when Peter stated,” A Digital Twin without a Digital Thread is an orphan”.

Digital Thread

And Peter’s statement, “All companies do PLM, most of the time however disconnected”, is another way to stimulate companies working in a connected manner.

As usual Peter’s session was a good overview of the various aspect related to the Digital Thread and Digital Twin.

Digital Twin

The concept of a virtual twin is not new. The focus is as mentioned before now more on the term “Connected” Peter provided the CIMdata definition for Digital Thread and Digital Twin. Click on the images to the left to read the full definition.

Peter’s overview also referred to the Boeing Diamond, illustrating the mapping of the physical and virtual world, connected through a Digital Thread the various Digital Twins that can exist. The Boeing Diamond was one of the favorites during the conference.

When you look at Peter’s conclusions, there is an alignment with what I wrote in the post: A Digital Twin for Everyone and the fact that we need to strive for a connected enterprise. Only then we can benefit from a Digital Twin concept.

 

The Multi-view BOM Solution Evaluation
– Process, Results, and Industry Impacts

The reports coming from the various A&D PLM action groups are always engaging sessions to watch. Here, nine companies, even competitors, discuss and explore PLM themes between themselves supported by CIMdata.

These companies were the first that implemented PLM; it is interesting to watch how they move forward like supertankers. They cannot jump from one year to another year on a new fashionable hype. Their PLM-infrastructure needs to be consistent and future-proof due to their data’s longevity and the high standards for regulatory compliance and safety.

However, these companies are also pioneers for the future. They have been practicing Model-Based approaches for over ten years already and are still learning. In next week’s post, you will read later that these frontrunners are pushing for standards to make a Model-Based future affordable and achievable.

In that context, the action group Multi-View BOM shared their evaluation results for a study related to the multi-view BOM. A year ago, I wrote about this topic when Fred Feru from Airbus presented the intermediate results at the CIMdata Roadmap/PDT 2019 conference.

Dan Ganser (Gulfstream) and Javier Reines (Airbus) presented the findings. The conclusion was that the four vendors evaluated, i.e., Aras, Dassault Systems, PTC and Siemens, all passed the essential requirements and use cases. You can find the report and the findings here: Multi-view Bill of Materials

One interesting remark.

When the use cases were evaluated, the vendors could score on a level from 0 to 5, see picture. Interesting to see that apparently, it was possible to exceed the requirement, something that seems like a contradiction.

In particular, in this industry, where formal requirements management is a must – either you meet a requirement or not.

Dan Ganser explained that the current use cases were defined based on the minimum expectations, therefore there was the option to exceed the requirement. I still would be curious to see what does it mean to exceed the requirement. Is it usability, time, or something innovative we might have missed?

 

5G for Digital Twins & Shadows

I learned a lot from the presentation from Niels Koenig, working at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology. Niels explained how important 5G is for realizing the Industry 4.0 targets. At the 5G Industry Campus, several projects are running to test and demonstrate the value of 5G in relation to manufacturing.

If you want to get an impression of the 5G Industry Campus – click on the Youube movie.

One of the examples Niels discussed was closed-loop manufacturing. Thanks to the extremely low latency (< 1ms), a connected NC machine can send real-time measurements to be compared with the expected values. For example, in the case of resonance, the cutting might not be smooth. Thanks to the closed-loop, the operator will be able to interfere or adjust the operation. See the image below.

Digital Thread: Be Careful What you Wish For, It Just Might Come True

I was looking forward to Marc Halpern‘s presentation. Marc often brings a less technical viewpoint but a more business-related viewpoint to the discussion. Over the past ten years, there have been many disruptive events, most recently the COVID-pandemic.

Companies are asking themselves how they can remain resilient. Marc shared some of his thoughts on how Digital Twins and Digital Threads can support resilience.

In that context, Gartner saw a trend that their customers are now eagerly looking for solutions related to Digital Twin, Digital Thread, Model-Based Approaches, combined with the aim to move to the cloud. Related to Digital Thread and Digital Twin, most of Gartner’s clients are looking for traceability and transparency along the product lifecycle. Most Digital Twin initiatives focus on a twin of operational assets, particularly inside the manufacturing facility. Nicely linking to Niels Konig’s session related to 5G.

Marc stated that there seems to be a consensus that a Digital Thread is compelling enough for manufacturers to invest. In the end, they will have to. However, there are also significant risks involved. Marc illustrated the two extremes; in reality, companies will end up somewhere in the middle, illustrated later by Jeff Plant from Boeing. The image on the left is a sneaky preview for next week.

When discussing the Digital Thread, Marc again referred to it more as a Digital Net, a kind of connected infrastructure for various different threads based on the various areas of interest.

I show here a slide from Marc’s presentation at the PDT conference in 2018. It is more an artist’s impression of the same concept discussed during this conference again, the Boeing Diamond.

Related to the risk of implementing a Digital Thread and Digital Twin, Marc showed another artistic interpretation; The two extremes of two potential end states of Digital Thread investment. Marc shared the critical risks for both options.

For the Vendor Black Hole, his main points were that if you choose a combined solution, diminished negotiating power, higher implementation costs, and potentially innovative ideas might not be implemented as they are not so relevant for the vendor. They have the power!

As an example of combined solutions Marc mentioned, the recently announced SAP-Siemens partnership, the Rockwell Automation-PTC partnership, the Schneider Electric-Aveva-partnership, and the ABB-Dassault Systemes partnership.

Once you are in the black hole, you cannot escape. Therefore, Marc recommended making sure you do not depend on a few vendors for your Digital Twin infrastructure.

The picture on the left illustrates the critical risks of the Enterprise Architecture “Mess”. It is a topic that I am following for a long time. Suppose you have a collection of services related to the product lifecycle, like Workflow-services, 3D Modeling-services, BOM-services, Manufacturing-services.

Together they could provide a PLM-infrastructure.

The idea behind this is that thanks to openness and connectivity, every company can build its own unique enterprise architecture. No discussion about standard best practices. You build your company’s best practices (for the future, the current ?)

It is mainly promoted as a kind of bottom-up PLM. If you are missing capabilities, just build them yourselves, using REST-services, APIs, using Low-Code platforms. It seems attractive for the smaller enterprises, however most of the time, only a short time. I fully concur with Marc’s identified risks here.

As I often illustrated in presentations related to a digital future, you will need a mix of both. Based on your point of focus, you could imagine five major platforms being connected together to cover all aspects of a business. Depending on your company’s business model and products, one of them might be the dominant one. With my PLM-focus, this would be the Product Innovation Platform, where the business is created.

Marc ended with five priorities to enable a long-term Digital Thread success.

  • First of all – set the ground rules for data governance. A topic often mentioned but is your company actively engaging on that already?
  • Next, learn from Model-Based Systems Engineering as a foundation for a Model-Based Enterprise.  A topic often discussed during the previous CIMdata Roadmap / PDT-conference.
  • The change from storing and hiding information in siloes towards an infrastructure and mindset of search and access of data, in particular, the access to Bill of Materials

The last point induced two more points.

  • The need for an open architecture and standards. We would learn more on this topic on day 3 of the conference.
  • Make sure your digital transformation sticks within the organization by investing and executing on organizational change management.

Conclusion

The words “Digital Thread” and “Digital Twin” are mentioned 18 times in this post and during the conference even more. However, at this conference, they were not hollow marketing terms. They are part of a dictionary for the future, as we will see in next week’s post when discussing some of the remaining presentations.

Closing this time with a point we all agreed upon: “A Digital Twin without a Digital Thread is an orphan”. Next week more!