What happens after a rocket unintentionally explodes or a plane crashes or some other catastrophic event occurs?
Tracing critical information back from the actual unit that failed to its specific design, manufacturing and supplier data can take weeks or months and often times even longer.
The ability (or inability) to trace back through the lifecycle - and time required - can cause tens of millions in losses… or worse; customer safety issues, operational shutdowns, brand damage, regulatory actions, liability and other business damaging results.
After Exploring the Digital Twin and then Exploring the Digital Twin... Some More, it’s important to spend some time on a related, yet different concept; the Digital Thread.
Huh? Sounds more like buzz word soup than a clear explanation.
A “communications framework?” An “analytical framework?” Those sound like vendor tools I’m supposed to buy as opposed to describing a critical aspect of my enterprise information architecture.
OK, OK, let’s zero in on Benefits and come back to Definitions in a bit.
What Benefits does a Digital Thread provide?
What they’re saying is that for artificial intelligence / cognitive computing to be useful - and more importantly - to avoid misinterpretations that can lead to disastrous mistakes, you need “meaningful” connections between data in different systems.
Which brings us back to What is the Digital Thread? More importantly, What it Is & What it Is Not.
Really seems the Digital Thread is the Relationship connections between all of a product’s digital assets - and their revisions - over the course of the product’s lifecycle including - but not limited to - versions of BOMs, parts, software, electronics, CAD models, documents, requirements, process plans, service manuals, etc.
Context – What does it mean if a Part is connected to another Part? Are they part of a BOM? Or are they FFF Alternates? What does the connection mean?
Not just ‘Engineering to Manufacturing’ but all the way through the Lifecycle from Concept to actual Use and ultimately retirement.
Not just ‘Mechanical CAD to CAM’ but across all disciplines including software, electronics, wire harness, hardware, requirements, etc, etc, etc.
Not just ‘inside the 4 walls’ but out to Suppliers and into the Field.
Not just a bunch of (meaningless) ‘point-to-point web links’ between data in disparate systems but meaningful relationships.
This last bullet is a significant topic that we’ll need to delve into in a future post.
In a systems-of-systems world where complexity and interdependencies are skyrocketing and Industrial Internet-enabled plants produce IoT products, the ability to interpret and act upon the data streaming back from the field and factories often require traceability to prior information from related revisions - Digital Thread.
Seems to me that the accuracy of Digital Thread traceability from the Digital Twin product configuration back through the lifecycle will be a necessary foundation for deriving value from the IoT.
What’s your take? Is the Digital Thread as important as I seem to think? Or is it just a ‘nice to have’ aspect of your enterprise information architecture?