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Task Forces

Aerospace and Defense Think Tank: Digital Thread from Design to Manufacturing

This session will discuss what is a digital thread and how it is being implemented with different industries. It will follow an example thread through the digital enterprise. 

The format for Tuesday, Aug. 18 at 9 a.m. CT will include:  

  • Brief welcome and kickoff from ASUG 

  • Rapid case study led by ASUG member Carol Kirkpatrick from Bell 

  • The discussion will focus on: 

  • How a digital thread can provide a framework to monitor the manufacturing process 

  • How the quality process can be used inside of the digital thread 

  • Sharing of recent wins or successes, along with resources utilized 

Gain visibility into the challenges and successes other SAP customers are experiencing, and acquire new ideas for real-world solutions. 

If you are experiencing challenges and would like to lead your own case study, fill out the survey here. 

Think Tank Insights:

  • Michael Edelen: Industry4.now is an SAP resource for you to better understand the Digital Thread process. We can now create and capture a digital thread of these products and assets throughout their entire life cycle. Intelligent products and assets can now provide real-time insights back into the business processes, from design to operate. 

  • Digital Thread Use Cases 

  • Differentiating products with increased flexibility and improved quality. 

  • Maintain seamless digital continuity or product-oriented information across the value chain. 

  • Synchronize real-time product lifecycle information across procedures such as informing checklists in quality assurance (QA) processes or updating assembly instructions on the plant floor. 

  • Daniel Dooley: What does it look practically look like, is it behind the scenes or something else? 

  • Carol Kirkpatrick: If I am looking at it design to manufacturing. It is fully hands off initially, when they are manufacturing this allows them to pull data from IoT immediately, and this allows for the predictive models to be created. We want the humans to be hands off in the process, but we want our people to be able to see the reports and let the data to be able to be taken and turned into information that then transitions into information or notifications for people to either fix something, add something, etc. This is a total hands-off process. The information is running in the background, the machine area is not being literally operated by people, it is not being controlled by people but monitored to understand what the status is of something. The notifications are helpful in alerting on important information, similar to a pager back in the day. 

Think Tank Links: