Improve your organization's ability to leverage data across the enterprise! The Digital Thread serves as a very effective means for companies to manage disruptions and ensure quality assurance of products and processes.
In doing so, companies can create the Digital Thread for many different systems and processes. Typically, it follows the life cycle of a product and links the information together in a data-driven architecture.
From Silo to Learning Organization
The process of creating a product is highly collaborative, requiring the contribution and interaction of multiple disciplines within engineering and manufacturing, including the involvement of the supplier network. Distribution across multiple isolated teams and tools leads to significant risk of product delays, defects, cost overruns, failed verifications and validations, recalls, etc.
In summary, the Digital Thread provides companies with a holistic view of their product data, enabling them to make informed decisions, improve collaboration, and streamline the product development process. This is especially important for companies that have an enormous amount of data: from development through design to manufacturing, including supply chain management and service history, as well as customer experience.
With Insight to Foresight
Thanks to the Digital Thread, companies can make predictions and communicate efficiently in both directions along this life cycle. It enables companies and their various disciplines to anticipate and effectively engage with all stakeholders, gain a unified and end-to-end view of their product and system data, access up-to-date data, and thus respond quickly to changes or new insights.
The Digital Thread enables companies to improve the visibility and traceability of product data throughout the product development process. This means that everyone involved can access the same information, reducing failures and noticeably improving collaboration.
The Digital Thread enables companies to shorten the time to market for a product. By eliminating manual data transfer between multiple systems, companies can streamline their product development process and get products to market faster.
By identifying problems early in the product development process and thus enabling them to be rectified, the Digital Thread helps companies to improve product quality. Access to up-to-date data equips companies to make informed decisions that help avoid the occurrence of quality problems.
The Digital Thread can help companies increase their innovative power. Opportunities to revise drafts more quickly, incorporating customer and supplier feedback, enhance reputation and the ability to act. In this way, the Digital Thread supports companies in increasing their innovative strength. The unified view of product data empowers companies to more easily identify opportunities for improvement and make changes directly.
The Digital Thread can help companies increase their innovative power. Opportunities to revise drafts more quickly, incorporating customer and supplier feedback, enhance reputation and the ability to act. In this way, the Digital Thread supports companies in increasing their innovative strength. The unified view of product data empowers companies to more easily identify opportunities for improvement and make changes directly.
By providing a clear audit trail of product data, companies are able to demonstrate complete regulatory compliance and reduce the risk of non-compliance. The Digital Thread thereby enables reliable assurances regarding compliance and proof of regulations and requirements.
Simplifying the collaboration of all project participants (internal and external) ensures a common understanding of the system, which acts as the basis for rapid, economical and successful product development and allows correct decisions to be made. Document-based, local work, duplicate data management, data silos and a mixture of different software tools that only work together via interfaces are just some of the possible causes of error that companies can effectively avoid using a Digital Thread.
The common thread for a holistic mapping of the product life cycle
The combination of engineering and CAQ software enables companies to achieve consistent use of requirements and specifications in the form of drawing and characteristic data throughout the entire product life cycle.
The various phases of the product life cycle can be worked through with APQP project planning and guarantee on-time and documented use of methods from engineering to "end-of-life". This is ensured by specifically defined actions and specification or result documents.
The holistic view of data along the Digital Thread allows real data from production or from the customer (complaints) to flow back into the planning documentation, such as the FMEA. This turns the FMEA into a knowledge base that directly passes on Lessons Learned to new products.
The active integration of engineering and quality processes creates the data basis for the comprehensible presentation and evaluation of all decisions, actions and results along the Digital Thread. Supplier processes can also be seamlessly integrated here.
Your path towards a professional
engineering and quality process
along the Digital Thread
Would you like to experience the possibilities for digitization along your product development process and product life cycle? Talk to our experts in person and they'll show you digital ways to design end-to-end processes along your engineering and quality management.
