A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

What is needed to turn PLM into Digital Thread?

What is needed to turn PLM into Digital Thread?
Oleg
Oleg
23 September, 2019 | 4 min for reading

There is no lack of PLM definitions in this world. From a very simple like the version provided by Al Dean almost 10 years ago to very complex such as CIMdata’s one – A strategic business approach that applies a consistent set of business solutions that support the collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product definition information. Check more here.

Manufacturing transformation these days open new horizons for PLM – Digital Twin and Digital Thread. Both are tightly connected to existing functions of PLM, but at the same time, expanding a traditional view of PLM even more.

CIMdata industry summary article – CIMdata President Peter Bilello Published on CATIA Community – “Digital Threads, Twins Playch-Up in the Factory speaks about the role of both in a new manufacturing environment.

However, my favorite passage from the article is about Digital Twin and Digital Thread:

In the factory, Digital twins are virtual representations of the enterprise’s assets, one twin for each physical production process, for example, along with its related production tools, and all that defines and supports them. The digital twin represents the asset at a specific point in time—“as-operated”—and on through the end of the asset’s lifecycle. Digital twins of assets are holistic, lifelike, and can be animated as simulations.

A digital thread is the communication framework that allows a continuous data flow into and integrated views of an asset’s digital twin. Via digital threads, digital twins are connected to the factory’s internal data networks for tooling, inspection, certifications, and much else. The digital thread gathers, secures, tracks, and moves data from where it is created or stored to where it creates value by providing insights to human decision makers, analysts, and programmers. Enabling the digital thread with lifecycle management ensures that data about the configuration of an asset is always clear, concise, and valid.

I think our understanding of digital thread is becoming more mature and there is a chance will move away from blunt marketing. My earlier concern was mostly about how existing PLM companies are calling old products using new names.

CIMdata article made me think about what is actually needed to turn a traditional PLM into a digital thread? Here is my take with 3 things you need to have to turn your PLM system into Digital Thread.

1- Full Lifecycle Support

It is important to have a system capable to manage all stages of the product lifecycle. it is true that many established PLM systems are mostly playing the role of PDM systems to manage CAD files revisions and data. To expand data management to expand to all aspects of product development with the ability to store xBOMs (or how some companies call “product structure”) for design, planning, manufacturing, maintenance, and support is needed to take the next step in product lifecycle implementations

2- Product data communication standards

Since the digital thread is potentially representing data from different products, functions, and organization to have solid horizontal data standards is absolutely important to ensure data is not locked in an old fashion PDM/PLM databases. Check on of my ideas about Product Data Commodities. In my view, we are going to see it very soon.

3- Multi-tenant data management

Last , but absolutely important. Digital Thread is spanning across multiple organizations. Modern manufacturing organization is distributed and performing as a giant web (networks) of data. Old fashion single-tenant data management is not enough to organize data in the right way to be isolated and at the same time available for many organizations. Multi-tenancy is a technology that clearly can make it happen.

What is my conclusion? We are just at a very early beginning of PLM transformations. Industrial companies are actively interested in how to improve their IT and PLM environment. Digital transformation is becoming real and as a result, the demand for digital thread implementations are growing. It is interesting to see a trajectory of today’s PLM vendors and new platforms capable to turn old fashion PDM/PLM environment into the future digital trend. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups, and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
17 July, 2015

The strongest community wins. Thanks Ed Lopategui for reminding this very important thing in your last GrabCAD blog – . It certainly...

20 June, 2025

More than a decade ago, I wrote a blog titled “How Many Buttons Do You Need in a PLM UI?”...

28 September, 2009

Interesting post few days ago. What is very annoying is the number of buzzwords growing in the enterprise system world....

19 September, 2011

It is already more than 2 years I first asked on my blog if there is a border between games...

22 May, 2009

Look on this blog post –3D Warehouse from Google. Does it make sense in context of what CAD/PLM vendors are...

20 March, 2009

 I’d like to start  a wide topic for discussion – BOM. Yes, Bill of Material. This may seem like an...

16 November, 2011

ROI is an important topic, and many times I’ve seen customers are not focusing on ROI assessment before starting PDM/PLM...

5 August, 2015

Products are getting more complex. Sensors, connected devices, cloud software – you can see these elements in almost every hardware product nowadays. Which...

2 May, 2020

CAD data management is an interesting topic. It was discussed so many times between software vendors, analysts, and customers. As...

Blogroll

To the top