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What Is Digital Thread?

What is Digital Thread? Why is Simulation Process and Data Management (SPDM) a fundamental piece of it?

Imagine being able to manage the asset bill of material (BOM) through its entire lifecycle—from ideation and design, to manufacturing, all the way to sales, service and even disposal. Typically, the CAD design models provide the “As Designed” bill of materials. Once manufactured, the “As Manufactured” BOM information typically needs to be serialized for that particular asset. Eventually, as the asset is configured and sold to the end customer and maintained, there could be other versions of this BOM commonly referred to “As Sold” and “As Maintained.” These BOMs need to include not only the mechanical components on the asset, but also the electrical and electronic parts as well as other hardware, software and firmware information for version control.

To add to the complexity, over the lifecycle of this asset, data generated from it might be owned by multiple organizations, such as the OEM, operator, customer, etc. For a complete traceability across the lifecycle of this asset, it is important to have this data housed in a digital model and framework such that we can track down every single component and firmware to the finest level of detail, tracing the genesis and evolution in the product’s lifecycle.

This is where a digital thread comes in, enabling full lifecycle traceability that can track a product and its digital assets all the way down to the serial number through its various stages and evolution.

This “How It Works” area of the Revolution In Simulation website is your go-to source for more in-depth information on SPDM, Digital Thread and the latest relevant end-user enterprise and vendor case studies and success stories.

A Drone and its Digital Thread

The United States Air Force’s Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and their innovation partner, The Wright Brothers Institute (WBI), joined forces this past summer to sponsor an internship program, The Summer of Innovation – Digital Drone. The idea for this program stemmed from the AFRL Aerospace Systems Directorate’s desire to develop a program that could be used to train the directorate’s engineers in one of the Air Force’s major digital transformation initiatives.

Systems Thinking and Digital Transformation

Systems Thinking is central to the design of complex systems and to the implementation of your long-term Digital Thread strategy. This Executive Brief describes the risks associated with product complexity and provides you with a practical guide to implement a Systems Thinking approach.

The Modern Face of SPDM

“Siloed or simulation tool-specific SPDM is simply not scalable with the increasing demands for more and more simulation as part of the overall design process,” contends Pawel Chadzynski, senior director, product marketing at Aras. “When simulation data is in multiple spreadsheets owned by individual experts, you can’t scale up the volume of simulation needed for the complexity of products. You just can’t do it with existing infrastructure.”

The Digital Thread & SPDM: Will this Bring Simulation out of the Shadows?

For simulation to have a broader financial impact on an enterprise, SPDM needs to be implemented and deployed seamlessly within the broader enterprise, especially as required to support implementations of Digital Threads and Digital Twins. This NAFEMS and Rev-Sim co-hosted webinar explores how these platform concepts advance the use and impact of analysis and simulation in the coming decade.

Toyota Motor Europe’s System-Centric Digital Thread: Improving System Performance with Cross-Discipline Collaboration and a Single Source of Truth

This presentation introduces approaches and platform characteristics that increase the smoothness of the information flow across domains, and between system designers and simulation engineers, through the realization of a custom, domain-independent, system-centric digital thread. This provides a single source of truth for the specifications of all systems of interest and related data.

How to Get Started with Simulation Process and Data Management

The objective of this book is to provide prudent, actionable, vendor independent, information and best-practices on how to approach an SDM project and achieve a first successful SDM deployment as well as identifying pitfalls to avoid based on facts and data from 20 years of SDM project experiences.

Cummins Uses Ansys’ Digital Transformation Technologies in Research and Development of Advanced Diesel Engines

In an effort to expedite the development of innovative, sustainable engines, drive enterprise-wide collaboration, and support environmental sustainability initiatives, Cummins is leveraging Ansys Minerva, powered by Aras. Learn more! #digitaltransforamationplatform #SPDM

Webinar: The Digital Thread & SPDM

For simulation to have a broader financial impact on an enterprise, SPDM must be deployed seamlessly within the broader enterprise, especially as required to support implementations of Digital Threads and Digital Twins. This webinar will explore how these platform concepts can advance the use and impact of analysis and simulation in the coming decade.

Making Digital Thread Work for You

The evolution of digital thread is still very much in flux. A number of essential components have yet to be clearly defined, and industry leaders and technology providers still have to agree on the best way to implement the concept to enable broad adoption. As a result, engineers are often left with as many questions as answers.

Digital Thread Latest Chapter in Rev-Sim Content Lineup

Independent organization expands coverage of key simulation topics as part of its mission to help democratize analysis-led design. Read Editor, Beth Stackpole's article in the March 2020 issue of Digital Engineering.

How The Appification of Simulation is Changing SPDM

The democratization of simulation and design optimization is proving to be an increasingly important goal as enterprises realize that greater collaboration can lead to significant advancements – and ultimately position an enterprise as the innovative leader in their industry.

Traceability in Simulation Processes

For many years standards for configuration management and systems engineering exist. But for realizing traceability in simulation much more details had to be clarified and specified, so that neutral/open and not vendor-proprietary solutions can be realized.

How Simulation Is Managed at Embraer

Before SPDM was implemented, the simulation process suffered from a lack of traceability, difficulty in reproducing results, no version control, a slow execution and little security. Embraer started using SPDM software called SimManager by MSC Software, the company best known for the most commercially successful version of NASTRAN (conceived at NASA), de rigueur at every established aerospace firm.

Connecting Simulation to the Digital Thread

Simulation has often been disconnected from the rest of the development process, struggling with traceability and the ability to provide meaningful feedback in a timely manner. Watch this demonstration as it shows how a user of the Aras Innovator digital thread platform can use simulation to evaluate the performance of a design as it progresses, and how the results of simulations are tied back to Requirements to do closed-loop Verification and Validation at every stage of the product lifecycle.

Why ANSYS Bet on Aras PLM Technology, and Why Aras Tends to Become a “Silent Partner”

“We believe that simulation is crucial to developing tomorrow's next generation products, and that better data and process management of simulations are needed to enable the digital processes of the future that will support these products,” Peter Schroer . "We see ANSYS and the Aras partnership as a potential game changer to connect simulation to technical processes for traceability, access and reuse throughout the product lifecycle. "

An Introduction to Simulation Process & Data Management

This webinar will provide an introduction to the fundamentals of Simulation Data Management for practitioners and managers. It will serve as an introduction to those new to the technology of SPDM. It will also summarise the state of the art based on the proceedings of the NAFEMS European SPDM conference of December 2018. It will provide a foundation for delegates intending to attend the upcoming NAFEMS International SPDM conference and World Congress.

SPDM: From Extreme Disappointment to the Democratization of Simulation?

“SPDM platforms will be crucial to realizing the true potential of PLM, digital threads and digital twins, and enable collaborations with other corporate platforms, such as ERP, MES and MRO to realize Industry 4.0 concepts in the next step,” says Marc Halpern

Why Do You Need Simulation Process and Data Management System?

Simulation Process and Data Management is the answer to boosting analyst productivity

Aras Goes All-In on Simulation Process and Data Management

In response to on-going customer demand, Aras is pursuing an open, flexible strategy for SPDM, allowing organizations to manage simulation at scale, accommodate a diversity of toolsets and include spreadsheets and custom applications.

Digital Twin Evolution: The Path to Simulation-Based Twins

"Although analytical twins have existed for a while, this evolution of simulation-based models that lead to the creation of digital twins is really transforming manufacturing, as product designs become more customized, unique and intricate by nature."

Microsoft partner ANSYS extends ability of Azure Digital Twins platform

“Collaborating with ANSYS to create an advanced IoT digital twins framework provides our customers with an unprecedented understanding of their deployed assets’ performance by leveraging physics and simulation-based analytics.” — Sam George, corporate vice president of Azure IoT, Microsoft

Integrating Simulation and Design in PLM

Making product development seamless and efficient across disciplinary boundaries requires blurring the lines between systems modeling, design, and analysis, while capturing a complete, accurate, traceable, and configuration-managed digital record of the product’s definition as it evolves—a complete Digital Thread of product data. Download this article from Digital Engineering.

Aras Goes All-In on Simulation Process and Data Management

In response to on-going customer demand, Aras is pursuing an open, flexible strategy for SPDM, allowing organizations to manage simulation at scale, accommodate a diversity of toolsets and include spreadsheets and custom applications.

Digital Twin Evolution: The Path to Simulation-Based Twins

"Although analytical twins have existed for a while, this evolution of simulation-based models that lead to the creation of digital twins is really transforming manufacturing, as product designs become more customized, unique and intricate by nature."

Microsoft partner ANSYS extends ability of Azure Digital Twins platform

“Collaborating with ANSYS to create an advanced IoT digital twins framework provides our customers with an unprecedented understanding of their deployed assets’ performance by leveraging physics and simulation-based analytics.” — Sam George, corporate vice president of Azure IoT, Microsoft

Integrating Simulation and Design in PLM

Making product development seamless and efficient across disciplinary boundaries requires blurring the lines between systems modeling, design, and analysis, while capturing a complete, accurate, traceable, and configuration-managed digital record of the product’s definition as it evolves—a complete Digital Thread of product data. Download this article from Digital Engineering.

Aras Innovator’s Investments in Simulation and Systems Engineering

Many of today's PLM solutions are notably not focused on enhancing functionality to support engineering, instead focusing on capabilities for other aspects of this business. In this video, we talk about how Aras has invested in simulation and system engineering capabilities for Innovator.

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Success Stories

What good is a revolution if it doesn’t result in useful change? See how companies are achieving significant time savings with measurable improvements in consistency, accuracy & repeatability…READ MORE

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Coming of Age

SPDM solutions have been around for a while with still low adoption, but the introduction of Digital Thread necessity put them under the spotlight. Key enablers are the increasing traceability of all kind of data and MBSE applications.
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