Digital Threads – benefits, challenges, and best practices

Abstract

AbstractThe premise of Digital Engineering (DE) – a term coined by the US DoD, is to introduce efficiency and agility into engineering practices based on digital representations of complex systems under development. DE aims to foster early and virtual validations, virtual exploration of solutions and design robustness by automating current document centric engineering processes. As stated by the DoD, DE is expected to result in shortening delivery time, reduced cost of development driving increased quality and trust that the intended system will indeed satisfy the stakeholder needs. The core technological pillars of digital engineering are model based engineering, designation of authoritative sources of truth to avoid ambiguity and inconsistency and establishing technological platforms to facilitate collaboration, security, and IP protection across all stakeholders. “Digital Threads” is an information architecture that aims to establish digital continuity across product lifecycle activities, foster engineering integrity, effective change management, tradeoff analysis, and dissemination of operational data. Digital threads are an essential part of the DoD Digital Engineering strategy. There are technological challenges to implement digital threads, as it requires to establish a digital fabric across various modeling and engineering operational environments. As of today, this topic is still in its infancy and the industry is seeking solutions and standards for it.