In July, Welding Digest published an article on three of the most likely industries to embrace the concept of digital twinning and digital threading. Read on to discover industries embracing these ideas in the here and now.

Automotive

The July article called out automotive as a perfect fit for digital twinning: modern vehicles are immensely complicated machines that collect and use large amounts of data.

Ford Motor Company is one automotive manufacturer engaging in robust digital twin use. Scott King, a manager of Advanced Manufacturing IT at Ford, spoke at length about the company’s digital transformation at Rockwell Automation’s 2019 Automation Fair, which took place November 20 and 21 in Chicago.

Figure 1: A 2018 test of Ford’s experimental self-driving Argo vehicle. The company’s multiple production models, all of which are complex and produce large amounts of data, are an ideal application for digital twinning. Source: Phillip Pessar/CC BY 2.0

Covering the event, Control reported that Ford’s systems produce one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) kilobytes of data every 48 hours. The sheer volume of data plus the complexity of the company’s products led Ford to develop seven separate digital twins for a vehicle: one each for as designed, as supplied, as built and as operated, plus individual digital models of the manufacturing process, the production facility and customer experiences.

King said all 84 of Ford’s global plants are slated to be linked to Ford’s industrial internet of things (IIoT) in the future. This action would bring the company’s disparate locations, supplier network, vehicle data and customer experiences into the same digital landscape.

Appliances

While appliances are not typically as complex as a vehicle, they are valuable commodities for a manufacturer. Plus, the more times they are touched and handled, the more chance there is of damage and loss.

Three years ago, GE Appliances undertook a project to reduce these touches and redesign its entire network and technology stack. Having an accurate digital thread for each appliance became an integral part of this undertaking.

According to a report by Modern Materials Handling, the company looked to automotive industry best practices to maximize just-in-time handling and delivery. By using RFID tracking, digital threading and synchronization between inventory management systems, GE Appliances hopes to eventually understand where each of their products is and where its destination is, whether it was ordered five minutes ago or was backordered two months prior.

Beyond lip service: Digital threads as integral for transformation

Earlier this year, CNBC published an article highlighting the continued importance of digital transformation for any organization. The article also delved into the reasons why most – close to 70%, according to McKinsey – large transformation projects fail in the long run. Among other factors driving organizational change, both McKinsey and CNBC agree that data and tools are among the most paramount.

To some degree, a digital thread represents both of those factors at once – a well-designed data system involving threads connecting physical products to the digital world can break down silos, enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately boost business results. While the three A’s of automotive, appliances and aerospace are most likely to see significant investment in digital twinning and threading, any organization dealing with product lifecycle management could benefit from a digitally threaded, silo-free, insightful data environment.