Implementing Digital Twin Best Practices From Design Through Manufacturing Webinar Review

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I-007e recently released a highly informative series of short webinars called Implementing Digital Twin Best Practices from Design Through Manufacturing presented by industry expert Jay Gorajia, the Director of Siemens Global Digital Manufacturing Services. The webinar is an excellent overview how data that is generated using a digital twin model can be effectively utilized to improve business execution using the Siemens tool suite.

The presentation is divided into 12 five-to-six-minute easily understood segments. Each segment walks the viewer through the entire design though manufacturing process and how the information incorporated into the digital model can significantly improve the design manufacturability and shorten manufacturing NPI cycles and product cost.

The digital twin data utilizes the established intelligent ODB++ data format to bi-directionally pass information between the various design though manufacturing operations. They have developed three intelligent integrated ODB++ variants that focus on design, process, and manufacturing information. This provides a closed loop feedback data format which reduces the amount of data translation between different formats effort and reduces potentially inherent errors.

The digital thread is subdivided into six steps. The first is design verification using the Valor NPI analysis software and the Valor Part Library (VPL). These tools are utilized to ensure that the component layout and placement are manufacturable and testable. It also analyzes the base PCB to ensure that it is manufacturable.

The next two steps in the flow are Production Planning to transform the design data to allow the next step, Process Engineering, to properly establish manufacturing process and materials utilizing the integrated dataset. This process setup ranges from establishing which equipment and lines will be required to ensuring that the proper test and inspection operations will be used along with the test and inspection programs and acceptability criteria.

Then the core value of Factory 4.0 automation gathers proper Manufacturing Analytics that are generated from the production process to be added to the Digital Twin data and provided to the final operations and fed back into the NPI software to be used for current design manufacturing improvements. This information is also added to the long-term collective process knowledge database to be used for future designs and process improvements. This allows automation of many existing manual data collection and analysis methods that are currently used. The automation can provide a real time 360-degree view of the manufacturing process, equipment utilization and WIP locations.

The final blocks in this flow are the Production Scheduling and Production Execution operations. These utilize the scheduling input from the operations team and generates and tracks material ordering and inventory. Real life manufacturing is always challenged with material mortgages, unplanned scrap, and equipment downtime. This suite of software potentially allows real time automated responses and reactions instead of waiting to the shift end report to react.

This webinar series presents an excellent overview of the power of an automated Data Twin environment using the Siemens product suite and illustrates how a business can reduce cost, waste and cycle time utilizing this approach.

Additional Resources

• The Printed Circuit Assembler's Guide to ...Smart Data: Using Data to Improve Manufacturing (a free eBook available for download)
• The Printed Circuit Assembler's Guide to… Advanced Manufacturing in the Digital Age  (a free eBook available for download)
• Siemens’ free, 12-part, on-demand webinar series “Implementing Digital Twin Best Practices From Design Through Manufacturing.”
• Roundtable RealTime With ... Siemens and Computrol: Achieving Operational Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing
  
• Lean Digital Thread, the monthly column from Sagi Reuven, Siemens Digital Industries Software

Dana Korf is the principal consultant at Korf Consultancy LLC.