Digital thread, also known as digital chain, is defined as “the use of digital tools and representations for design, evaluation, and life cycle management.”. It is a data-driven architecture that links data gathered during a

Product lifecycle In industry, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. ...

from all involved and distributed manufacturing systems. This data can come from any part of product's lifecycle, its transportation, or its

supply chain In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, activ ...

. Digital thread "enables the collection, transmission, and sharing of data and information between systems across the product lifecycle" to enable real-time decision making, gather data, and iterate on the product. The term 'digital thread' was first used in the Global Horizons 2013 report by the USAF Global Science and Technology Vision Task Force. Digital thread was further refined in 2018 by Singh and Willcox at MIT in their paper entitled "Engineering with a Digital Thread". In this academic paper the term digital thread is defined as "a data-driven architecture that links together information generated from across the product lifecycle and is envisioned to be the primary or authoritative data and communication platform for a company’s products at any instance of time." Digital thread enables "data to be integrated into one platform, allowing seamless use of and ease of access to all data".

Applications

Digital twin

Idaho National Laboratories describes Digital Twin as "the merging of integrated and connected data, sensors and instrumentation, artificial intelligence, and online monitoring into a single cohesive unit." It is a critical capability of

model-based systems engineering Model-based systems engineering (MBSE), according to the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), is the ''formalized application of modeling to support system requirements, design, analysis, verification and validation activities begi ...

(MBSE) and the foundation for a Digital twin, which is defined as "a digital replica of a physical entity". In fact, digital thread was first described as related to Digital twin in the Global Horizons 2013 report. Digital thread is a means to gather data for use in the development of a Digital twin; "some argue igital threadis the backbone of digital twin applications". "digital thread platforms can capture data from different systems, standardize it, and provide a seamless link between the physical process or product and the digital twin". The term digital thread is also used to describe the traceability of the digital twin back to the requirements, parts and control systems that make up the physical asset. Although digital thread and Digital twin are "every so often understood to be synonymous...they are not the same as Digital Twin relies on real-time data from its physical counterpart". "In short, digital thread describes the process while digital twin symbolizes technology". "Compared to the digital twin, the digital thread can support decision-making by designing and regulating the data interaction and processing instead of high-fidelity system models". A digital thread enables a Digital twin by ensuring that incoming data is made uniform and easily accessible through the three main data chains: # The Product Innovation chain - Product designs, processes, and design flow are incorporated into the digital thread # The Enterprise Value chain - Supplier information, material data, and manufacturing processes are incorporated into the digital thread. # The Field and Service chain - Maintenance manuals and part availability are incorporated into the digital thread. Enabling a Digital twin could result in petabytes of data, and "necessitate the use of highly sophisticated tools and software."

Tools

= DeepLynx

= "DeepLynx is an ontological

data warehouse In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integra ...

with

timeseries In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...

data support". It was primarily authored by John Darrington and Cristopher Ritter to tackle Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tool integrations and warehousing, and has evolved to enable support for digital twin.

Internet of things

A key aspect of digital thread is the

Internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

, whose "cyber-physical systems, sensors, and so-called smart devices" are an important source of the data required by digital thread. "The ability to gather massive amounts of data through the aspired omnipresence of sensors furthermore fuels the emergence of other key technologies" such as

Big data analytics Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, and

Cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over m ...

. "Thus, the data collected by using IoT technologies constitute the basis of advanced simulation models, which is in essence the livelihood of the digital twin paradigm and therefore also an integral part of the wider digital thread."

Smart manufacturing

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

used in conjunction with Digital Thread are increasingly more required in

smart manufacturing Smart manufacturing is a broad category of manufacturing that employs computer-integrated manufacturing, high levels of adaptability and rapid design changes, digital information technology, and more flexible technical workforce training. Other ...

applications.

is a "prerequisite for managing highly variable" data of

processes, gathered through digital thread.

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

can be trained using this data to create "autonomously self-improving production processes 4and to facilitate organizational decision-making". "the digital thread paradigm not only leads to the accumulation and processing of massive amounts of data but is also shaped by the analytical results these both technologies provide".

References

Software frameworks {{compu-stub