The PROSTEP Digital Thread Platform brings it all together

The term digital thread is used to describe the ability to trace how digital information was created, with which other information objects it is interrelated, and what status it has across the different domains.

It is crucial that users do not have to spend a great deal of time compiling this information manually, but that it is made available pretty much at the touch of a button. To do this, you need to be able to look into more than one IT system without necessarily having to consolidate the information in a single system.

The most widely used PLM or ALM systems are unable to do this as they only manage and monitor their own information. PROSTEP, however, links all the systems in product development and manufacturing with its well-known products, brands and solutions and consolidates this information in the PROSTEP Digital Thread Platform. The platform is used to synchronize or link the data between the different IT systems and exchange it with partners.

Complex products with short lifecycles

End-to-end digitalization is not necessarily a new requirement, but the difficulties that companies are facing have increased in recent years. Their products are becoming increasingly complex, while product lifecycles are becoming ever shorter. If companies want to address issues such as model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and the increasing proportion of software in products, they need to introduce new IT systems. This, however, only improves the work ability of individual domains and groups of engineers but not their ability to collaborate across domain boundaries, which means that the real benefit of end-to-end digitalization is lost.

A major challenge when creating a digital thread is organizing human collaboration. The domains still focus far too often on their own specific objectives and pay too little attention to how the other domains work and what information they therefore require. Which is why they find it difficult to see the connecting factors in their day-to-day work. This is exactly what is currently radically changing – not least due to the impact of new development methods such as MBSE.

The increasing possibilities offered by digital product descriptions and the growing proportion of software in the products mean that functions can now be described based on models – regardless of whether they are subsequently mapped in the hardware or software. Without MBSE, there would be an unnecessarily large number of iterations during development due to the fact that although the data in the software systems is digital, it is not linked. The model-based description of the product or system also provides a basic framework of the relationships for the digital thread, which is then filled with content and instantiated in the domains. The domains define the lifecycles of the components, regardless of whether they involve mechanical engineering, electrical/electronic engineering or software. They must, however, be linked together. This is the only way to determine, for example, which software version can be used on which control unit.

Not only digitalization and a model-based approach have made IT integration easier but also increasing use of the cloud. However, there are still gaps at the interfaces between the domains, which the PROSTEP Digital Thread Platform closes.

Companies must see the development of a digital thread as a strategic issue and take a holistic approach to digital continuity across all domains and systems. They must not always only place focus on the domains that benefit the most or the ones that require the most time and effort to digitalize. For them, this is a paradigm shift that can be compared to the switch from 2D drawings to 3D CAD models. Decision-makers in companies must therefore take a holistic view of ROI.

Greater sustainability thanks to the digital thread

The companies that profit the most from end-to-end digitalization are primarily companies that develop durable consumer and capital goods and want to launch new product versions onto the market in ever shorter cycles. The digital thread helps them reuse validated data more easily and to feed information from the product lifecycle back into development. That is why, in the long term, the topic is of interest to companies of all sizes and from all industries that manufacture sustainable products and want to further improve these products. And also to companies with relatively simple products that are complicated to manufacture and therefore require a digital thread of the production systems.

For many years, PROSTEP has been providing these companies with support for digitalizing their business processes using products and solutions for synchronizing federated IT systems, cross-domain data linking and cross-company data exchange. Our strategy has always been to automatically extract the digital information, prepare it and make it available for use. In this respect, bringing our OpenPDM, OpenCLM and OpenDXM GlobalX products together in the modular PROSTEP Digital Thread Platform, with its standardized interfaces and services, is the logical next step in the further development of this strategy. Our products OpenPDM and OpenDXM GlobalX generate knowledge about object dependencies so that the information network for the digital thread can also be created automatically to a large extent.

OpenCLM manages and visualizes this information network, which sits atop the IT systems like a spider's web and supports different use cases. Information on the carbon footprint of products can, for example, be compiled and made available in standardized product passports. The linked information can be distributed across a large number of systems within a company and can even be located in the systems operated by suppliers. Our many years of experience with data migration means that, when it comes to switching to a new system, we are able to transfer the links to the new system without having to reconstruct the digital thread.

Orchestrating cross-domain processes

Our products and the solutions that build on them have demonstrated for a number of years now that they are well coordinated with each other and thus make sharing information easier. Our standard connectors to common PLM, ALM and ERP systems, for example, are used for both data synchronization with OpenPDM and data exchange with OpenDXM GlobalX. Information accumulated during data synchronization and data exchange can, at the same time, be used to link the data in OpenCLM. This means that the platform makes it very easy for customers to orchestrate cross-domain processes such as change management.

As we continue to develop the PROSTEP Digital Thread Platform further, we will continue to standardize the interfaces and services offered by our product brands. Certain functional overlaps and redundancies will, of course, also be eliminated, which is beneficial when using the individual brands as stand-alone solutions. This means that it is still possible for PROSTEP customers to start with "just" data exchange using OpenDXM GlobalX or "just" OpenPDM system integration. The platform strategy does, however, also offer them the option of expanding their installation to include additional functions for creating a cross-system, company-wide digital thread.