Archive for the ‘Digital Twin’ Category
Monday, January 11th, 2021
Although there is already a large number of projects involving digital twins under way in the maritime industry, there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is and no uniform approach to implementation. These are the results of a survey on the digital twin conducted by PROSTEP among shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies.
Everyone is talking about the digital twin – even in the shipbuilding industry. But is there something like an industry-wide understanding of what companies in the maritime industry mean by the term “digital twin” and what they expect from it? To find out, PROSTEP conducted a cross-enterprise survey of shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies. Due to the novelty of the topic, we assumed that companies have different ideas about the digital twin.
The objective of the survey was to shed light on what companies in the maritime industry understand the digital twin to be, to record the status of current or planned applications and solutions with their potential and challenges, and also to see how the companies organize collaboration in the context of the digital twin. Managers from more than a dozen shipyards, operators, suppliers and classification societies, representing different sectors of the maritime industry from cruise, containers and cargo to naval engineering, navy and public agencies, were surveyed.
For many of those who participated in the survey, the digital twin is at best a vision and at worst a marketing buzzword. It therefore comes as no surprise that there is no common industry-wide understanding of what a digital twin is; there are however some remarkable similarities. Almost without exception, respondents across all segments of the industry associate the digital twin with the digitalization of their product or the asset to be operated but not with the digitalization of the production systems. Almost all respondents also believe that this digital twin does not end when the product is handed over to the customer but also accompanies the operating phase.
On the whole, it appears that respondents from the supplier segment have somewhat of a head start over other segments of the industry when it comes to the level of maturity of digital twin projects. Many are in the pilot stage or are already being used productively. It is also the suppliers who are calling the loudest for standards that will enable them to integrate their digital representations with other systems in the overall system that is a “vessel” and exploit the potential that the digital twin offers.
The companies have different reasons for addressing the topic of the digital twin. From an engineering perspective, primary focus is placed on optimizing designs based on insights gained during operation, the early testing of functions and providing support for downstream business processes with the help of 3D product models. In the operating phase, improved planning and remote support for maintenance and inspection tasks as well as the optimization of operating parameters are key drivers for projects currently underway. Initial use cases in manufacturing include the virtual approval of work, the early training of personnel in the construction phase of a vessel, and the optimization of manufacturing processes.
For the majority (over 70 percent) of the companies surveyed, improving service quality is the most important potential offered by the digital twin; this is followed by supporting new business models and improving the development process. As far as suppliers in particular are concerned, the main benefit is the ability to avoid subsequent costs and work resulting from development errors. For operators, on the other hand, the digital twin offers significant potential for increasing capacity utilization, reducing operating costs and improving sustainability, e.g. by reducing emissions.
Increasing collaboration in the context of implementing and using digital twins is seen throughout the industry as posing the greatest challenge – along with a lack of standards and the availability of appropriate models, which are of concern to suppliers in particular. With the exception of a few suppliers, the vast majority of the manufacturing companies surveyed do not work together with partners on digital twin projects at all or do so rarely. Most operators, on the other hand, already use digital representations of their ships to optimize operation of the vessels together with partners and customers, and they access digital service and maintenance offerings from partners.
In principle, all the companies are in favor of a higher level of collaboration when it comes to implementing and using the digital twin. Many, however, have reservations when it comes to protecting their intellectual property and see contractual ambiguities with regard to digital content. This means that every company is trying to exploit the potential of the digital twin with their own benefit in mind. There is also no uniform approach to dealing with this topic in the individual segments of the industry, and a different approach is taken for each application scenario. There is a risk that the digital twin projects will lead to the creation of new data silos.
The results of the survey provide a basis for recommending action that can be taken by companies in the maritime industry. Perhaps the most important is collaborating with other companies in the context of implementing and using digital twins. Companies that actively collaborate with partners are usually able to implement their projects faster.
We recommend that companies tackle concrete projects that offer economic value added. Collect the data you need for the project at hand but avoid creating new data silos by linking the data that you have collected according to clearly defined rules. The digital components for the digital twin are available in most companies in the form of models, data and IT systems. You just need to clarify how you can best exploit this potential to meet your business needs. Our many years of experience with digitalization initiatives in the shipbuilding industry means that we are in a position to help you do this.
By Lars Wagner
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Thursday, January 7th, 2021
The HARTING Technology Group, one of the world’s leading suppliers of connection technology, made use of PROSTEP’s PLM strategy consulting services last year. In this interview, Dr. Kurt D. Bettenhausen, member of the board responsible for New Technologies and Development at HARTING, discusses the company’s digitalization strategy and the need for action in product development.
Question: Dr. Bettenhausen, could you give us a brief introduction to HARTING?
Bettenhausen: HARTING is a leading global provider of connectivity solutions for the transmission of data, signals and energy in automation technology, mechanical engineering, robotics and, particularly important, in railway technology. We also supply entire checkout zones and provide the automotive engineering sector with actuators, magnet systems, etc. Our big growth market there is power transmission for electric vehicles with on-board charging cables, as well as charging cables and connectivity solutions for charging stations. We are a tier-1 supplier to the VW Group, supplying for example a cooled fast charging solution for the Porsche Taycan.
Question: HARTING has successfully defied the coronavirus pandemic and saw a slight increase in revenue last year. What factors played a role in this success?
Bettenhausen: First of all, close proximity to customers and to the markets and responding quickly to their requirements. The second factor is a strong sense of responsibility. We have ensured that our employees can work safely, be it in the office, on the production floor, in the testing laboratories or in logistics, and thus maintained our ability to deliver at any time. The third factor is that we quickly adapted all our market communications.
Question: In which industries and markets are you experiencing the greatest growth?
Bettenhausen: One area is undoubtedly electromobility, which really took off in Germany last year, thanks in part to financial support measures. This is where we recorded the highest rates of growth percentage-wise. But we have also enjoyed growth in the fields transportation/railway technology, automation and logistics. The fact that we are able to grow in a time when many companies are shrinking means that everyone has made a contribution.
Question: You recently established a cooperation with MIT. What kind of impetus do you hope this will provide?
Bettenhausen: We hope to find partners for collaboration and co-creation. MIT is one of the top addresses worldwide when it comes to thinking outside the box. With its hardware sector, the ecosystem in the northeast of the USA is a deliberate counter-pole to Silicon Valley. Companies that are part of this ecosystem via the Industrial Liaison Program are able to come together more quickly with the aim of solving tasks or developing initial prototypes.
Question: How innovative is HARTING? How “young” are your products on average?
Bettenhausen: We have a large number of new products in every sector. But we also continue to develop the products that our customers have known and valued for years. Countless variants of HARTING’s HAN connector, which we patented at the end of the 1950s, are still available today. It is constantly being expanded to include new modules, such as ID modules and current sensors, and new power ratings.
Question: What challenges does HARTING face in product development? How global is your product development?
Bettenhausen: We have globally distributed teams to ensure that we drive development forward close to and together with our customers, even though development is still primarily carried out in Germany. This means making note of customer requirements in a quick exchange and developing innovative answers ourselves.
Question: Aren’t connectors standard products?
Bettenhausen: We cover a whole range of connectors. The basis is provided by standard connectors from the catalog. They have a modular concept and you can configure them to meet your requirements. Then there is the Customized Solutions division, where we develop complete solutions together with customers. The jumper cables between two railcars are a good example. Every railcar manufacturer has its preferences as to what it wants to exchange and how it wants to exchange data, signals and power.
Question: What does this wide range of products mean in terms of your digitalization strategy?
Bettenhausen: It has to offer an appropriate level of flexibility. An off-the-shelf digitalization solution only offers us help with our standard products – we need flexibility for everything else. It begins with our colleagues, who first have to understand the task for which they are supposed to provide a solution together with the customer. PLM tools that offer a corresponding level of flexibility are needed to plan and produce this solution.
Question: In which fields of activity are you driving digitalization forward?
Bettenhausen: If you want to produce a modular HAN connector down to a batch size of 1, all the processes from ordering to production through to logistics have to be digitalized systematically. This is why we keep a close eye on everything to do with enterprise software. Here at HARTING, we don’t realize a project and then leave it as it is for all eternity. It’s like the lathes we were introduced to in the apprentice workshop but no longer use. The same applies to digitalization: We use it, develop it further and launch the next stage whenever it makes sense and is needed.
Question: And what about digitalization in the context of product development?
Bettenhausen: Digitalization of product development alone won’t help if we can’t get our products out there. That’s why we have an outstanding mechanical engineering department that can perform certain special tasks in-house. Product development has come a long way over the last ten years. The big players in the PLM sector have come out with complete solutions that can be used to simulate the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of the products to be designed and break the digital twin down to the levels required by production.
Question: What role does PLM play in your digitalization strategy?
Bettenhausen: We think in terms of three core processes: development, production and sales. Development includes all the steps from designing the products to designing the production systems to making the resulting product data available throughout the entire value-added chain.
Question: What does your PLM landscape currently look like? What are the cornerstones?
Bettenhausen: The cornerstones are currently management of master data and the 3D drawing chain. The aim now is to take the next step with an upcoming PLM project.
Question: Am I right in assuming that you don’t want to reveal which systems you are currently using?
Bettenhausen: Yes. However, I can tell you that we are using two of the leading products for PLM and ERP.
Question: If you are using two leading systems, why did you need PROSTEP’s PLM strategy consulting services?
Bettenhausen: We wanted to prepare for the next round and not, so to speak, “stew in our own juices” and be dependent on the information provided by the vendors. A PLM project is about the processes, the organization and only at the end about the tools. When it came to preparing for the project, it was important that we get an opinion from a largely neutral third party and see whether our own assessment was right. PROSTEP was a big help. The consulting took place before I joined the company. I only joined in time to see the presentation of the results and thought it a great success. An appropriate roadmap had been drawn up indicating how we can further develop three interwoven aspects, namely processes, organization and tools, in the coming years.
Question: In which processes is there a need for action?
Bettenhausen: A review of the current distribution of tasks in the core process development indicated that we need to develop it further. This was confirmed by our own assessment.
Question: Can you say specifically what you want to develop further?
Bettenhausen: Collaboration between the different disciplines….
Question: Do you mean mechatronics and system development? You want to achieve a more integrated development process?
Bettenhausen: We want to add new functionality to the electromechanical design process and integrate the various disciplines involved more tightly into it. In a further step, we want to integrate simulations into the design process rather than carrying them out in parallel with the design.
Question: You are the chairman of the VDI’s Digital Transformation Committee. What does transformation mean for HARTING? Or to put it another way, are you still digitalizing or are you already transforming?
Bettenhausen: I use the term “digitalization” to refer to the availability of data and information in digital form. We at HARTING have already come a long way in this respect. The next step is to see whether we can do the same with our processes and our organization and as highly efficiently as we intend. That is the aspect of transformation that we are currently working on.
Mr. Bettenhausen, thank you very much for talking to us.
(This interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)
About Dr. Bettenhausen
Dr. Kurt D. Bettenhausen has been the member of the board responsible for New Technologies and Development at the HARTING Technology Group since September 2020. Prior to this, he was Chief Technology Officer at Schunk, a manufacturer of gripping systems and clamping technology. Bettenhausen studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, where he also completed his doctorate. He then gained his first job experience at Hoechst AG, parts of which were taken over by Siemens in 2001. Bettenhausen worked for Siemens for over 17 years in a number of different management positions, his last as Senior Vice President of Siemens Corporation in the USA.
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Monday, December 21st, 2020
Our claim “Integrate the Future” means developing innovative products and services for you. Sponsored projects provide us with important ideas for this. In recent years, we have significantly increased the extent of our research activities. Four innovation projects are currently running simultaneously: V&V Methods, SET Level, ProProS and DigiTwin. In October, we applied for funding for two new projects (ImPaKT and HoliYard).
PROSTEP invests a lot of time and money in these projects and thus in its future – for the benefit of our customers. As a technology company, we want to ensure that our service portfolio is subject to ongoing development. The sponsored projects allow us to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to technological advances and gather important ideas and gain know-how. We develop demonstrators for new products, which we can then get ready for market faster. And it is thanks to this that we were granted the first patent in the company’s history for the “procedure for the electronic documentation of license information” based on the use of blockchain technology this year.
Participation in these projects benefits us in a variety of ways. Our close contacts with renowned research institutes working in new fields such as artificial intelligence, cryptography, systems engineering and autonomous driving have over the years made it possible for us to expand our own know-how and attract new employees. At the same time, we work closely with (potential) customers and become more familiar with their requirements, which helps us develop software solutions that meet their needs. We are also gaining a deeper understanding of the industry in new application areas, such as shipbuilding in the ProProS and HoliYard projects for example.
Our traceability solution Tracy would certainly not have reached the level of maturity it currently has without the impetus provided by the V&V and SET Level projects. Within the framework of ImPaKT, a newly proposed sponsored project that will probably be launched in January, we intend to work together with both industrial partners like CLAAS and Schaeffler and SMEs like Hofmann, a specialist for balancing machines, on expanding OpenCLM to include functions for the use case of cross-domain impact analysis of changes. It will also involve the use of artificial intelligence methods. You will find more information about the use cases on the OpenCLM web page.
Sponsored projects make an important financial contribution to our product development and also to marketing. They generate a great deal of public interest and raise our profile. The SAMPL project alone gave rise to 23 presentations and 24 publications in the media; we also presented our new blockchain solution at 34 events. Our demonstrator will soon be exhibited at the Digital Technologies Forum and will also be shown to international visitors.
As part of the SAMPL (Secure Additive Manufacturing Platform) project, we have worked with partners to develop an end-to-end solution for the forgery-proof exchange of 3D print data using blockchain technology. The project has now been brought to a successful close. During the course of the project, blockchain technology was integrated in our OpenDXM GlobalX software solution. We can now support new business models that exploit the advantages of blockchain technology and involve exchanging large amounts of data. We are about to win our first major contract.
Our employees are given the opportunity to explore exciting topics and grow as a person. They in turn make it possible for us to remain innovative and break new ground for you – our customers.
If you are interested in finding out more, please contact martin.holland@prostep.com.
By Martin Holland
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Saturday, December 19th, 2020
PROSTEP is increasing the pace of development of its PLM integration platform OpenPDM and will in future deliver a new release every six months. Version 9.2 will be on the roadmap at the beginning of February 2021. In addition to support for the current releases of the PLM systems Windchill, Teamcenter and 3DEXPERIENCE, it offers new connectors to GIT, Jira and to OSLC-enabled systems.
OpenPDM 9.2 is the second release of the new generation of our world-leading PLM integration platform, which is characterized by its cloud-ready software architecture. The new version not only offers connectors to Windchill 12.0.0, Teamcenter 13.0 or 3DEXPERIENCE R2021X, but now also supports the REST interface of Dassault Systèmes’ PLM platform. Via this interface, OpenPDM can now communicate very easily with a cloud instance of 3DEXPERIENCE. In addition, we have developed a direct coupling to EXALEAD based on OpenPDM, so that data from Windchill, Teamcenter or SAP can be evaluated with EXALEAD.
We have also enhanced OpenPDM 9.2 with a view to integrating systems for managing software code and controlling the software development process (Application Lifecycle Management or ALM for short). There are new connectors to GIT and Jira. Furthermore, we have ported the existing connector to the ALM solution PTC Integrity, now called Windchill RV&S, to the new OpenPDM generation. Our connector to the IoT platform ThingWorx offers the possibility to also display data from non-PTC systems with PTC Navigate.
OpenPDM 9.2 supports new data linking concepts through an OSLC provider. It enables OSLC consumers such as IBM RTC or DOORS Next to link requirements and functional models via OpenPDM with PLM information in other source systems.
The new version of our cloud-enabled PLM integration platform will be delivered to our customers from February 2021. In addition, they will receive a Feature Enhancement and Fix Pack for the current release every two months, which contains features requested at short notice in the projects.
By Mirko Theiß
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Monday, December 14th, 2020
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was not only PROSTEP TECHDAY 2020 that was held online this year but also almost every other event at which we normally make an appearance. In recent months, we have participated in numerous online events with presentations and virtual booths. The feedback was rather restrained: What our speakers missed most was contact with the other participants.
One of the events we have been attending for years is LiveWorx, where we demonstrate the solutions in our portfolio, and in particular our OpenPDM integrations to Windchill, Creo and the IIoT platform ThingWorx, to the PTC community. Although this year’s trip to Boston was canceled, our appearance was not. In one presentation, we demonstrated to participants how our integration platform can provide support for end-to-end digitalization in heterogeneous PDM/PLM landscapes and make data from different enterprise applications available in role-based ThingWorx apps. You can watch the video here.
The 3DEXPERIENCE Conference EuroCentral organized by Dassault Systèmes was also held online this year. Our participation in the event comprised not only a virtual booth but also two live presentations. In the first presentation, we explained to participants how our data exchange platform OpenDXM GlobalX supports 3DEXPERIENCE (3DX) platform users in the context of cross-enterprise collaboration. The second presentation focused on data migration. We used concrete use cases to demonstrate how companies can migrate metadata and CAD data from legacy systems to the 3DX platform in high quality with the support of PROSTEP’s experts and our OpenPDM integration platform. Several presentations were also made at our booth, including one on how 3DX can be incorporated in an EA-based PLM strategy.
Our PLM strategy consultants also responded to the constraints placed on their ability to travel by participating in online events. One highlight was most certainly the joint presentation given together with Bosch at the prostep ivip Symposium in which we presented the current status of the SetLevel and V&V research projects. The two projects deal with the question of how the traceability of simulation steps and results can be ensured when it comes to validating autonomous driving functions. A video of the presentation, which was also shown at the 6th Symposium Driving Simulation, can be found here.
At the same time, our consulting specialists made an appearance in the former plenary hall of the German Bundestag in Bonn as a sponsor of LeanIX EA Connect Days 2020, one of the most important conferences in the field of enterprise architecture management, which was a smart combination of physical and virtual event. In an interview, Dr. Martin Strietzel explains the role EA (Enterprise Architecture) plays in PLM and the digitalization of the product development process and what PROSTEP expects from its collaboration with LeanIX.
We gave a number of presentations at the NAFEMS DACH 2020 conference, which was ultimately held online following several postponements. The presentations covered a wide range of topics from the challenges posed by the digital twin to the role of simulation in the platform economy through to a concrete representation of end-to-end digitalization using the system model in systems engineering as an example. You can find out more about these topics in our white paper.
Some of our customers in the maritime industry like MEYER Werft and MEYER Turku are using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to rethink their PLM architectures. Our shipbuilding experts made use of a variety of online activities to help them come up with new ideas. At a virtual booth at PI Marine USA, we showcased our integration platform OpenPDM SHIP, which connects shipbuilding-specific development systems with each other or with mechanical CAD systems and all the leading PDM/PLM and ERP systems. You can find more about this in our white paper.
We also presented the results of a cross-enterprise survey on the digital twin in the maritime industry at the start of the 5th Schiff&Hafen Maritim 4.0 conference, which was held online this year. Details of the study, which attracted a great deal of attention, will be provided in the next newsletter.
By Joachim Christ
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Sunday, December 13th, 2020
Finnish shipyard MEYER Turku, part of MEYER Group and one of the world’s leading builder of cruise ships, ferries and special ships, plans for the future of shipbuilding. In a Proof of Concept (PoC) led by PROSTEP, and in cooperation with TECHNIA the shipyard examined the advantages of model-based, visually supported work planning using DELMIA software in the production process.
MEYER Turku’s aim is to optimize planning and control in production and thus to reduce the production time of individual ships. This requires a restructuring of the historically grown IT landscape, which is strongly adapted to the shipyard’s specific needs. The Finnish engineers use the shipbuilding specific CAD system AVEVA Marine for basic and detailed design of the steel structures (Hull). For work planning and control, production-relevant data is then transferred to NESTIX, a MES tool perfectly adapted to the existing production processes. The software however cannot directly use 3D design models, which makes data consistency difficult and impedes visual work planning.
When looking for a future planning software for manufacturing, the project managers in Finland did not need to look far afield: DELMIA is part of Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE already in use as a PLM platform at the sister shipyards in Papenburg and Rostock. In view of the ongoing harmonization of the IT landscapes at the different shipyard locations, the idea of a practical test of the Dassault software in Turku was therefore obvious.
Another obvious choice was to cooperate with PROSTEP’s shipbuilding experts, who have been supporting MEYER for years as system-neutral consultants in the integration of its CAx and PLM landscapes. They took the lead in the project team that was to carry out the evaluation of DELMIA’s Out Of The Box (OOTB) functions from a user perspective. With a view to later productive use, the aim was to clarify whether DELMIA could provide all the necessary functions, how much customizing would be required and how the software could support closer integration of hull and outfitting design in the future.
As part of the PoC, PROSTEP’s experts developed a concept for converting and transferring the geometry and metadata from AVEVA Marine to 3DEXPERIENCE and coordinated the activities of Dassault partner TECHNIA, which was responsible for testing the DELMIA software and introducing users to the new, integrative way of working. “The cooperation between PROSTEP, TECHNIA and the users at MEYER Turku was very targeted and worked perfectly. We were able to carry out the project in time and budget and achieved all expected results” praised Pekka Puranen, CAD/PLM Developer at MEYER Turku.
During the implementation of the project, the two consulting firms combined their core competencies. The experts from TECHNIA contributed their industrial best practices in applying DELMIA, while PROSTEP brought in its experience with shipbuilding processes, PLM as well as agile project management. In addition, PROSTEP also developed the integration to provide AVEVA Marine 3D model data in DELMIA for testing purposes. The company benefited from years of close cooperation with the Finnish shipyard and the proven in-house integration platform OpenPDM SHIP, whose functions were used to implement the integration.
TECHNIA’s experts tested DELMIA together with the work planners at the shipyard so that they could gain practical experience with the model-based approach. It was found that visual work allows them to control the progress of the work much better. In principle, the PoC was able to map the defined use cases with DELMIA OOTB. For productive use, however, the software would have to be customized in order to fulfil all essential requirements of the Finnish shipyard. For example, an automatic time calculation for the planned work is missing as basis for the resource and capacity planning. “If we achieve a similarly high degree of automation with DELMIA, we will need much less time for work planning due to the integrative approach”, concluded Pekka Puranen.
By Nils Sonnenberg
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Friday, December 11th, 2020
Online conferences can be rather tedious affairs. PROSTEP proved that it doesn’t have to be that way with its PROSTEP TECHDAY. The professionally moderated online sessions with short presentations about key new products and interesting presentations by customers offered participants a diverse and entertaining program. “The quality was almost as good as on TV,” said one of the viewers.
With almost 150 participants, this year’s PROSTEP TECHDAY was better “attended” than ever before. The response was extremely positive. Many of those participating congratulated us via e-mail on the “super event”, the great format, the professional support provided by TV and event host Julia Bauer and the informative and professional presentations by the speakers.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s customary meeting of the PROSTEP community took place on screen, to some extent like a TV series with three episodes and different protagonists. Each session kicked off with a brief review of what has been achieved since the previous TECHDAY and how PROSTEP is positioning itself as a partner for the digital transformation. There is no way around the cloud. According to Gartner, 75 percent of companies are navigating their way to the cloud, which is why we, too, have made our software solutions cloud-ready.
In cooperation with the DARZ data center in Darmstadt, we are making our OpenDXM GlobalX data exchange platform available as a SaaS model – an offering that is already in productive use at customers like OSRAM Continental and Valeo Siemens. The cloud offering is soon to be expanded to include additional services such as the data conversion service OpenDESC.com. We also have plans to offer PLM integration to an increasing extent as a service based on our cloud-capable OpenPDM product suite. To facilitate the deployment of applications in different cloud infrastructures, the company is working intensively on integrating technologies like Docker, Kubernetes and OpenShift, said Udo Hering, head of Product Management.
Getting to grips with topics of the future is of strategic importance to PROSTEP, which is why we participate in numerous research projects. They play a key role in the context of developing new software products such as the OpenCLM traceability solution, which product manager Dr. Fabrice Mogo Nem presented to a wider audience for the first time at PROSTEP TECHDAY. As Dr. Mogo Nem pointed out, it is not merely another PDM/PLM system but a layer that makes the relationships between the information distributed across different data silos and domains transparent, thus reducing the amount of time and effort required to find information and ensure requirements regarding traceability are being met. OpenCLM will be available from July next year but can already be put to the test in a proof of concept.
Client for CAD data processing
OpenDXM GlobalX was the protagonist in the first session. In the current version 9.2, PROSTEP has expanded the new web interface to enable administrators to also perform all their essential tasks on the web, as Product Manager Daniel Wiegand explained. A new and powerful CAD client is now available to companies that want to use the data exchange platform without PDM/PLM integration. It analyzes the components stored in a directory and independently puts together the assemblies that are to be sent. The client also offers a convenient 3D preview function that allows the assemblies to be viewed prior to being sent. The OpenDXM Broker can be used to automate processes like data conversion.
We have expanded the range of PDM integrations offered to include a new plug-in for the 3D dashboard that is part of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The plug-in makes it possible for multiple data sets to be sent in a single operation. The roadmap for the next version of OpenDXM GlobalX includes not only improving security functions using two-factor authentication but also another plug-in for the Teamcenter Active Workspace client.
Alexander Meier from the automotive supplier HBPO used the ECTR plug-in as an example to illustrate how quickly OpenDXM GlobalX can be integrated into the SAP landscape and how easy the solution is to use. HBPO develops and manufactures high-quality front-end modules, cockpits and center consoles for the automotive industry. Users at the company can not only create send jobs in their familiar interface but also receive feedback in SAP ECTR as to whether the job has been successfully transferred to the data exchange platform and the data delivered to the recipient.
Function for hollowing assemblies
TECHDAY’s second session focused on the automated provision of product data from PLM and ERP systems to downstream processes in manufacturing, assembly and service. Product Manager Timo Trautmann explained the technological transformation of PDF Generator 3D, which has become a powerful platform for converting 2D and 3D data into a wide variety of formats, to participants.
It not only allows 3D PDF documents to be created automatically but also makes it possible to publish 2D and 3D data in HTML5 format so that it can be displayed in a normal web browser. An agile release process ensures that customers are always able to use the latest CAD formats as input.
The session also provided participants with a brief overview of the standardization activities being conducted by the 3D PDF Consortium, of which PROSTEP is a member. Significant progress has been made, particularly with regard to ISO standardization of the PDF/ A-4e format as a standard for the long-term archiving of engineering data. The committee is also working on new topics such as the ability to embed native STEP data in 3D PDF documents so that it can be viewed directly with Adobe Reader. As Trautmann said, our roadmap includes support for this option as from version 10.1 of PDF Generator 3D.
One of the highlights of the current version is the new “hollowing” function, which makes it possible to automatically hollow out assemblies and remove components that cannot be seen when preparing them for spare parts catalogs. As Trautmann pointed out, this provides better protection for the know-how inherent in the assemblies. But PDF Generator 3D offers more than just the ability to generate product-specific spare parts catalogs at the touch of a button. The solution also supports change reporting when releasing new data sets by displaying changes made to the geometry or associated PMI information, e.g. tolerance specifications.
The presentation by André Hieke from Siemens Large Drives Applications (LDA) demonstrated just how versatile PDF Generator 3D is. The manufacturer of customized high-voltage motors and converters initially used our software to automate the creation of offer documents in the pre-sales phase. It is now also being used productively in housing manufacture. Siemens LDA thus provides both its own workers and external partners with manufacturing documents without any need for drawings. Unlike the JT technology, which was originally used for this purpose, the 3D PDF-based solution enjoys a high level of acceptance among users. It is therefore planned that it also be implemented in shaft manufacture and at other locations, as Hieke said.
OpenPDM with cloud-capable architecture
The highlight of the third session was the customer presentation given by Clifton Davies from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. The manufacturer of military aircraft uses our PLM integration platform OpenPDM in combination with Red Hat’s service bus architecture Fuse to export part information, manufacturing BOMs and work schedules from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform or DELMIA to the SAP ERP system and the MES system Solumina from iBASEt. The timeframe for the integration project was very tight and was complicated by a changeover to a different version of 3DEXPERIENCE, which PROSTEP carried out in less than 24 hours, as Davies said in praise. Lockheed Martin wants to use the solution to integrate other PLM systems such as Teamcenter and enable bidirectional data exchange.
As of version 9, PROSTEP has placed the architecture of the PLM integration platform on a new technological footing to facilitate cloud deployment, as Product Manager Mirko Theiß explained. The new process engine is based on the open source software Camunda and makes the graphic modeling of integration processes possible. The connectors can be used independently of the platform and communicate with it via REST APIs. Even though the OpenPDM 8.x versions will to continue to be supported, in the future we intend to place primary focus on the cloud version and also want to develop additional connectors for integrating production planning processes, software development and application lifecycle management (ALM).
We consider our first online TECHDAY a resounding success, even though we sorely missed face-to-face contact with our customers and interested parties.
If you did not have the opportunity to participate online and would like to know more about our solutions, the three sessions are available for viewing.
You can find the records here.
By Peter Pfalzgraf
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Monday, December 7th, 2020
The MEYER Group is capable of supporting most of the drawing management related processes with ENOVIA’s standard functionalities. This is the most important finding of a comprehensive proof of concept (PoC) that PROSTEP’s shipbuilding experts carried out for the shipyard. MEYER intends to reduce the time and effort required for customization and updates by using a more standardized PLM solution.
The MEYER Group is one of the leading manufacturers of cruise ships with shipyard locations in Papenburg, Rostock and Turku, Finland. The shipyards use different IT systems for the generation and management of shipbuilding information, which are to be more closely harmonized in future. In Papenburg and Rostock, for example, an AS/400-based mainframe application is still in use for drawing management together with two ENOVIA versions adapted to selected process steps. The applications are highly customized and are gradually running out of maintenance, which is why MEYER wants to replace them with an OOTB (out-of-the-box) solution that can be used throughout the company if possible. The idea of emulating the existing mainframe functionality one-to-one in the new environment was rejected as too costly and not target-oriented.
OOTB in this context means that there is no need to program customizations in a software beyond configurations already provided by the manufacturer in the platform to provide the required features and functions. However, it does not mean that customer-specific adaptations are no longer possible. The advantage for users is that they can use all the necessary features virtually out of the box, while IT can more easily upgrade installed applications to new versions. However, users must accept that the solution may not optimally support all shipbuilding-specific processes they are used to or that modifications to the processes may be necessary.
Therefore, the core question was whether and to what extent the functionality of the OOTB Dassault solution is suitable for the shipbuilding process requirements of the MEYER shipyard. To find out, the company commissioned PROSTEP’s experts to carry out a PoC. As general contractor, they contributed their project management experience and their knowledge of MEYER’s customer-specific processes to the project, while PROSTEP’s partner CENIT provided the necessary ENOVIA expertise. The two companies worked together very efficiently at the PoC over a period of several months, even though shipbuilding was uncharted territory for CENIT employees.
Together with the users at MEYER, the project team analyzed the processes in the legacy systems and defined the use cases to be supported by ENOVIA and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform from scratch. Some of these processes contain automatisms specially tailored to the ship topology. Then the team checked if the processes described can be mapped to the OOTB solution in principle, which standard objects and functions are required for this, how the use of the standard functions affects the processes, and at which points gaps may arise between the previous and the new way of working. The main functions that were considered were project management with milestones and tasks, document management with version management, classification, and the ability to distribute documents to specific people for release.
This methodical procedure met with great acceptance among users. It turned out that they can handle most of the tasks in drawing management with the standard functions. What is missing out-of-the-box is the automatic assignment of ENOVIA objects to the ship topology, i.e. to the block in which the user in question is currently working. There are also a few gaps in the connection to the planning system for the ship development process, which must be closed by developing an interface. In addition, the Excel import must be extended in order to import the drawing lists with thousands of drawings per project into the new environment.
At some points in the process, users will have to change their way of working to be able to use ENOVIA largely OOTB. For example, the software manages drawings or metadata differently than the legacy system, in which they are stored as one object together with planning data such as milestones, deadlines, etc. The project team therefore made the decision to separate the planning aspects from the drawing management and to use the project management functions from the ENOVIA standard. One of the advantages of this separation is that tasks can be defined independently of the drawing, and 3D models and other project-relevant documents can be assigned to the planning data in future. In other areas, the project team was able to provide additional functions from the standard, for example for the ship- or project-specific classification of certain documents as a working standard. This was not possible in this form before.
The focus of the project was expanded several times, so that the project, which was originally designed to last three to four months, ended up taking almost a whole year. As part of the extensions, the project team was commissioned to test the suitability of the OOTB solution also for drawing management at the Turku site, where other IT systems are in use. The PLM experts at PROSTEP concluded that the OOTB solution was basically suitable for this purpose, but recommended prioritizing harmonization for easier implementation.
Following the successful completion of the PoC, MEYER began preparing the implementation in Papenburg. “ENOVIA OOTB is a very important and forward-looking topic for the entire MEYER Group”, says Executive Board Member and Head of Design at MEYER WERFT Malte Poelmann. “Enabling digital and cross-location collaboration within the group in a maintainable PLM platform was the motivation for this project. The consultants from PROSTEP and its partner CENIT made a decisive contribution to the success of the project with their industry and PLM expertise”.
By Jan Bitomsky
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Thursday, September 17th, 2020
Following successful completion of an assessment of the current status, the joint research project ProProS being carried out by the Bremen-based Lürssen shipyard group, the Machine Tool Laboratory (WZL) at RWTH University in Aachen and PROSTEP AG is entering the crucial phase. The task now is to develop new methods for end-to-end digitalization of the shipyard’s manufacturing and assembly processes.
Production planning in shipbuilding is characterized by a poor overview of the planning status at the different planning levels and a low-level feedback that is provided late by production. As a result, delays often occur because problems are identified too late and planners have a difficult time finding alternative production paths. The shipyard expects increased digitalization of the processes and the implementation of new tools for anticipatory production planning and control to shorten lead times for the individual departments and result in more efficient use of the infrastructure and available resources.
The aim of the ProProS project is to create a digital twin for the shipyard’s manufacturing and assembly processes that can be used for status monitoring and for optimizing shipbuilding. Together with the WZL’s manufacturing experts, who are responsible for developing the production technology logic, we will be mapping the planning data from the target process (product structure, work orders, assembly sequence, scheduling, etc.) in an end-to-end data model, so that it can be compared in real time with the actual data from production and assembly.
The joint project has an overall budget of 3.2 million euros and is sponsored by the BMWi. It is coordinated by the Lürssen shipyard group and is divided into different phases. The first two milestones involve mapping the material flow in order to recognize where the parts to be manufactured are located and to integrate the target data from planning. This data is then to be compared with the actual data in future milestones in order to detect deviations and adapt the planning data if necessary. The project will run until 2022. The project partners are planning to present the first interim results at COMPIT 2021.©
By Carsten Zerbst
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Tuesday, April 7th, 2020
Digital Twins offer the possibility to simulate the behavior of physical assets, to monitor them during operation and to continuously improve them. The data and models from planning and development form the context in which the operating data can be interpreted correctly. Putting them together from the wealth of available information is an essential prerequisite for the use of digital twin applications.
The Digital Twin is the digital image of a physical object or system, which can be a product, a production plant, but also a company or a process. The Digital Twin connects virtual planning and development models with the real product or production world in order to give people a better insight into the system and its condition or behavior. A vision in the sense of Industrie4.0 is to enable technically complex systems to control themselves autonomously and behave more intelligently through digital algorithms, virtual models and status information.
The functional relationships of a product or a production plant are defined based on customer requirements and in consideration of a multitude of legal requirements in product planning and development. Without knowledge of these interrelationships, the operating data that the real asset captures and provides in its later product life cannot be interpreted correctly. If you do not know how a machine or system is actually supposed to function, it is not possible to identify the causes of deviations from this target state or behavior beyond doubt and take appropriate countermeasures. At the same time, knowledge of the history of origins is also important in order to be able to assess for what reason, for example, a bearing has failed and which other machines could also be affected by the problem.
This connection between the real asset and the development and planning models describing its history is called a digital thread. It is the digital “red thread” that links the information of a real product instance across processes and IT systems. On the one hand, this makes it possible to bring together all the information from the life cycle of the product instance or the real asset and thus forms the basis for the creation of a digital thread. Without a digital thread, the digital twin can be reproduced manually, but it is difficult or impossible to keep it up to date. On the other hand, traceability along the Digital Thread allows decisions in development and production to be questioned and optimization potential to be identified with the help of the operating data.
Management of product configurations
From a PLM point of view, the starting point of the digital twin is a specific configuration of the product or production system, for example the asset in its delivered state. This includes not only mechanical, electrical/electronic and software components with their models, but perhaps also service-relevant information, such as the service life of certain components. Bringing this information together and maintaining it manually is time-consuming and error-prone, especially since the configuration changes over the course of the product’s life, whether through software updates or other measures in the context of maintenance or further development of the asset. The expectation of today’s PLM systems is to automatically extract the configuration for the Digital Twin and keep it up-to-date.
We speak here of the concept of Configuration Lifecycle Management (CLM), which makes it possible to generate temporally valid views of the product across IT system boundaries and to manage product configurations across all phases of the product lifecycle. The main function of CLM is to create and keep consistent the various views of the digital product model during the life cycle, and to document their validity over time. To do this, it uses cross-system and cross-discipline baselines. These baselines document the state of the configuration at a certain point in time or maturity level and thus also control the representation of the Digital Twin. They enable companies to immediately and reliably answer the question at any point in the process whether and how the product or asset meets the requirements placed on it or in what state the asset was at a defined point in time, for example, which product configuration was delivered to the customer.
In order to manage the configuration of a product along its entire life cycle in a traceable manner, the use of a powerful PLM integration platform with connectors to all IT systems involved is required. As an intermediate layer spanning all IT systems, it creates the prerequisite for bringing together the information from the individual IT systems in a way that corresponds to the digital thread concept.
Cross-company collaboration
In industries such as mechanical and plant engineering or shipbuilding, companies face the challenge that the manufacturer who builds and provides the Digital Twin is not necessarily the operator and user who feeds it with operational data. Both the digital data and the operating data, or at least part of it, must therefore be exchanged and synchronized across companies in order to keep the Digital Twin up to date and to be able to use the operating data for the continuous improvement of real assets. Questions such as data security, protection of intellectual property and ownership of the data therefore play a very central role in the development and use of a digital twin application.
More and more customers today require their suppliers to deliver digital data and models to support Digital Twin applications along with the physical assets. CLM can be used to control not only the amount of information provided, but also the level of detail of the information and the formats in which it is delivered. They can be compiled largely automatically and made available to the customer as a data package, for example in 3D PDF format.
In order to maintain digital consistency in cooperation across company boundaries, the exchange partners must first agree on the scope of the information to be exchanged and agree on common standards for handling this information. But the central question is where the Digital Twin should live? PROSTEP is convinced that it is advisable to set up a joint collaboration platform for this purpose, which will become part of the information model. This platform will provide customers with the information they need to build their Digital Twin application while the development process is still underway and will also allow them to synchronize changes to the master models during operation if necessary. The common platform can also be used to link parts of the operating data required by the manufacturer for new service offers such as predictive maintenance or product improvements with the Digital Thread.
Three building blocks for the Digital Twin
The foundations for the Digital Twin are already laid in product development and production planning. To bring it to life and keep it alive, the digital umbilical cord must not be cut. This is why an integration platform is needed that makes the digital information from the various authoring and data management systems available at any time. A powerful configuration management system that manages the relationships between the information scopes and their validity is essential for building a Digital Twin. However, digital consistency is not a one-way street. In order to derive maximum benefit from the product twin in terms of closed loop engineering, traceability between Digital Twin and Digital Thread must be ensured. The creation of a collaboration platform maintains digital consistency even beyond company boundaries.
By Lars Wagner
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