Are you ready to join the Digital Thread revolution?

DT in the manufacturing world is an integral part of the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise championed by the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute. In the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry, DT is the idea of seamlessly integrating information through the value chain – from initial capability planning and analysis, through design, manufacturing, and testing, to final sustainment and disposal. All of these functions can share contextualized digital information, and the DT allows dynamic, contemporaneous assessment of the system’s current and future capabilities. Specialists throughout the process can work on items simultaneously to inform decisions throughout the life of a system or product.

In 2013, Christine Furstoss, global technology director for GE’s Global Research division, suggested that DT was the next great step-change for manufacturing after Henry Ford’s perfected assembly line and Toyota’s lean processes. DT forms an integral part of GE’s Brilliant Factory concept, which envisions, “a self-improving factory that can continuously improve products and processes in the plant with a seamless Digital Thread that can gather, analyze, and transmit data real-time to different parts of the supply chain.”
 

Quick wins of DT

Digital transmission allows engineers to test CAD designs with virtual models to ensure they can be produced. A common database and physics-based models support design optimization for production ability, usability, and maintainability. Manufacturers can reduce the cost of hard tooling by incorporating tolerances during this collaborative design process, which results in less external tooling needed to position components during assembly.

Manufacturers will progressively rely on DT to interpret data gathered by connected sensors, machines, and networks. Intelligent feedback loops will adapt and incorporate manufacturing and maintenance needs into the initial design stage.
 

Supply chain

Supply chains are becoming less linear and more like a network, raising the risk of misalignment between supply and demand. Internally, supply chains comprise three elements: physical, informational, and financial. DT can bring these elements together and integrate them into the wider business.

Successful internal supply chains are driven by a strategy that aligns with the overall enterprise business or organizational goals. Supply chain planning must also be reactive to feedback from its network of infrastructure, human resources, technology development, and procurement.

The supply chain network must also be responsive to feedback from inbound and outbound logistics, operations, marketing, sales, and service. These processes drive requirements for infrastructure and human resources – key factors in the bottom line. Network, processes, and human resources have their own driving factors and risks. Performance metrics such as sales, inventory availability, and on-time-in-full manage these risks. However, an enterprise-wide picture that allows good decision making at all levels cannot be built unless the base structure and connectivity is right, and this is where DT comes to the fore.
 

Rapid or iterative change?

As with core design and manufacturing processes, misalignment of the supply chain and poor feedback can lead to a lack of coordination, predictability, resilience, and consistency. Internal supply chains are often intermittent and disconnected processes with a mix of manual, automated, and virtual elements. Replacing these with a continuous, interactive, holistic, and integrated process is not always possible, and iterative, evolutionary change can create inertia. Disruptive technologies can bring revolutionary change.

For those who are unwilling to take the radical and major steps that GE officials are considering, innovative boards of directors can drive change forward by aligning strategic goals with supply chain plans and operations. Subsequent steps include ensuring full visibility of the physical, financial, and information supply chains and identifying and allocating costs throughout. This will enable planners to quickly examine alternative scenarios and evaluate the financial impact of proposed actions, giving insight that supports informed decisions.
 

Evolution not revolution

A customized whole-enterprise DT solution is more a revolution than an evolution, and a large program brings its own risks for failure. Introducing capability as each step of the iterative change is undertaken may prove less risky. This option also may be more comfortable for all concerned in such a fundamental change program.

IFS provides such capability with a solution based on modular building blocks that can be scaled to match business needs – from companies such as GE that use IFS aerospace and defense products to smaller manufacturing and supply chain enterprises and defense organizations.

Once these internal supply chain processes are right, the enterprise will be well on the way to engaging with and implementing DT, and will be more resilient and agile, enabling it to address external supply chain risks.

Are you ready to join the Digital Thread revolution?

IFS
www.ifsworld.com

About the author: Jeff Pike is head of strategy and marketing for the IFS A&D Center of Excellence and can be reached at jeff.pike@ifsworld.com.