Future Product Lifecycle and Digital Networks

I do wonder about these assertions around ‘it scales to fabricate globally by doing it
locally, not by shipping the products but shipping the data.’ Sometimes it
seems to assume that material will ‘just be there’ in the right place and of
the right type.

At the very least there are nuances which might stem from performing some kind of ‘Material flow’ analysis- comparing the centralized design/production model to the (idealised) centralised design/distributed fabrication(/assembly) one. My thoughts are in flux – but revolve around considering the transport of raw (often bulk) materials. Not mentioned – but energy delivery is another analysis to lay over the top.

Let’s assume that materials are ‘semi processed’ – so not mainly made up of ‘ore’ – so ‘waste’ – may be considered small for metals and some plastics and vanishing to 0 for ‘ideal’ 3DP. We can assume bulk transport is generally by sea. I think some questions
help us think a bit more deeply about this:

So how will the(multiple) materials be distributed? – probably from a spoke and hub – wheel model– and also recycling /waste recovery will need to be performed also. – options locally or centrally (via the return trip?). Digital actually goes both ways – local requirements can be centralised back – and combined with the efficient and (relatively)
cheap transport costs. Locally tailored design can be centralised (or maybe at the local HUB (by local I mean country or state)).

My thoughts here are that a spoke and hub model (with manufacturing at or near the hubs)actually makes more sense – than what many people mean by local. Especially as there is some benefit to large industrial processes (incorporating some form of mass customisation) in automated assembly. Think Amazons distribution hubs here)

My point is that eventually a balance similar to the (efficient) logistics model may emerge – rather than the ‘true’ local one – one that is often driven by some people’s desire to ‘want’ the local over the central in a quasi political statement [not you Oleg] – to supposedly save energy and resources and maybe tilt back to idealised ‘craft’ production and allow them to take a break from the ‘modern world’ .
Of course all the above needs better modelling – sounds like an idea for a student project.

Thanks Oleg Hub and Spoke is what I meant by airline, logistics- that’s why to me it goes way beyond IoT and PLM convergence – and well into E(M)RP. Infact it goes beyond ERP into SRP (‘State’ resource planning??) – well at least beyond the individual enterprise. What ever happens I think this is beyond the existing boundaries of what we refer to as PLM, ERP etc Logistical planning – and will need more than a few get ‘rich quick’ startups to get going.

There is a role for a new Digital Infrastructure (not just routers and fibres) to be laid down – before what we now call Digital manufacturing actually can achieve its ‘True’ promise. I think that maybe Logistical ‘material’ movement – may actually be a better place to start – than ‘traditional’ PLM – and may be a better guide to what gets produced where and How (eg Trad subtractive/AM) than just some idealistic 3DPers wanting it to be produced locally based on the idea that local is more efficient/ appropriate. Build the new PLM on top of the LLM (Logistical Lifecycle Management??)

A free (but appropriate) link from my employers (different brand) http://www.quintiq.com/

Oleg, by NDI
( I should have said New Digital Manufacturing Infrastructure) – I mean what could be built up on top of the Internet (as I said router and fibres)and WWW – and even above that with xml, json, HTML, Javascript and general IT technologies that are used by all industry sectors outside (as well as inside manufacturing – eg insurance, finance. Travel and holiday bookings (ie words and numbers).

I think when we start talking about ‘things’ or services (such as CAD/CAE) which are directed at making things, and involve the logistics (and procurement maybe?) of large amounts of Stuff) – the current providers of Digital manufacturing ‘infrastructure’
are actually behind the curve – but with a largely captive market. Vendor tie in and (wilfully?) poor levels of interoperability – should have been sorted out (via the market of via regulation) years ago – but there’s been no clear winners and unlike the Victorians who say imposed (an imperfect) standard(ish) rail gauge which helped to expand and unify the industry– govts are too afraid to intervene even in cases where it may make some sense.

So I’m saying let’s take the at as a start analysis (via say rfid) of material flows – and then as a next step the effective routing of material flows as a county or societial level (tied in with digital design flows as you original article was discussing) – as the start of a New Digital Manufacturing Infrastructure- back bone – which businesses can use (as a kind of broker initially I guess?) – and society can deliver ‘stuff’ in a more optimal way.
Any existing Digital manufacturing vendors – can then join (or contribute to) that digital infrastructure – but one that has a combined material and design flow. Things such as STEP, semantic web/RDF etc have all be false starts – but now maybe with things such as NoSQL databases and with the (often ) higher Product complexity of manufactured goods – and the knowledge of how to produce s/w to produce them- it’s time for traditional Digital Manufacturing companies to produce another layer (of Product Definition models for one) on top of the WWW stack (and it is technically possible) and if they don’t then for people outside the traditional Digital manufacturing world to
shake things up. Aligning the Digital and the Real world Infrastructure architectures appeals too – although that is just instinct.

I’m just saying it maybe worth taking material logistics as a possible- non obvious starting point for that as a way to break out of ‘traditional’ Digital Manufacturing models (eg Cloud) – which tend to play out as a repeated history of how the WWW developed (PC/Browser) on every desk, open source etc, open everything) . but enough for now – I will mull…

HI Oleg, sorry for the late reply. The question you ask is
difficult to answer. “Who will build the infrastructure”. There are several ‘potentials’.

The STEP/ISO community is an obvious one – and as you
mentioned RDF has been used as a possible back bone – but has the issues of being seen as ‘too complex’ – plus STEP has problems (I recall) over the mapping between different vendor data representations- especially when each vendors
wants to Add value – through its own technologies and geometric (and non geometric) representations. I also recall that RDF and associated technologies (esp SPARQL) did not have write support (to DB). Neo4J for example does (via CYPHER) in a similar way to SQL.

RDBMS will not go away (and can talk to Graph DBS anyway) but I see that with Graph representations being ‘natural’ for both geometric and non geometric Product/engineering data – then having a graph representation ‘All the way down’ – UI- bunessness/modelling layer->data layer – could both
reduce the amount of code involved (increasing reliability) and I understand potentially allow for better scalability in the cloud. Research would need doing here of course. When I see a feature tree, a Boolean op, as assembly tree
or an update ‘Graph’ – they are all implicit or implemented in different forms where the ‘back bone’ is really a Graph – with operations/ data at each node.

This leads to the alternative ‘Who’:

The other alternative is some form of start up (or set of
start ups) – who without having the
legacy (and overheads) of the existing vendors) are more interested in providing a Service than selling their ‘product’ (in this case CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM[ I will use [CAE] for short]). So this goes back to your point of ‘starting from (non CAE ) data Logistics, materials etc’ – to I guess ‘Set the example’ with simpler data structures than CAE – but I feel with many of the ways that Google, twitter etc have being doing things –
possibly involving ‘Graph Thinking’ the CAE industry could learn a lot in forming the Infrastructure back bone.

Traditional vendors will resist of course – but as a partial
analogy even Microsoft and partially embraced open source to be involved in the general software infrastructure – but are concentrating more on their core ‘value
add’ to ‘Join’ the other (two) infrastructures Android and iOS – and also make money on hosting via Azure. Perhaps this is the part the traditional vendors can play a part – by hosting the data and serving other (smaller) players ‘value add’ apps on a common (ish) platform.

Amazon is a good ‘third way’ possibility/ model for what
might happen – in that they built up their AWS platform for internal use (not their core business) but made sure that it could act as a service for others.

Ironically Microsoft could be the ones who developed or coordinated the build up of a new ‘Manufacturing infrastructure’- again going back the the AD man – materials/ logistics discussion which started this – especially as the CAE levels of sophistication in terms of algorithms are relatively or often ‘low level’.

Enough – too long again and too confusing. Unfortunately
I am in Cambridge UK – so a coffee will have to wait for a while. thanks for reading.