From a PDM/PLM perspective, process control in Industry 4.0-driven manufacturing needs to be based on end-to-end Product Data Management.
“The ability to efficiently and effectively manage this digital product model along every step of the way – from development to sales, from manufacturing and commissioning to customer experience and the provision of product related services” – this has come to be known as product lifecycle management or PLM since the beginning of the new millennium. Increasingly, PLM is going beyond mechanical geometric data models to include the logics behind electrics and electronics and the programs of the embedded software.
Being able to manage product data in this way is the most basic prerequisite for modern, smart, connected products to work and successfully compete in a globalized market. It is the most basic prerequisite for a smarter approach to organizing networked manufacturing. It is the most basic prerequisite for Industry 4.0.” (Hechenberger Thesen / Sendler Circle)
So, what exactly is a digital business process?
Many companies have processes in place that only appear to be digital. The hallmark of a truly digital business process, however, is the fact that operable information is available for further processing.
Nowadays, you have to look very closely to distinguish truly digital business processes from the fake ones. Eliminating paper alone does not mean that the information is now digital. In reality, it has merely been “electronified”. The scanned version of an invoice that a supplier emails to its customer is a typical example for this. The invoice information it contains is far from digitally operable but without truly digital information, there is no genuinely digital business process.
What is true for invoices on the business side can also be applied to design and development practices, that is, the information that exists in a product lifecycle management system (PLM). In this case, it is all about the data and workflows that make up a company’s product management. An engineering change request for a product created in the PLM system, in PDF format, is not an operable piece of information, meaning information that you can digitally process. What is important here is to make the relevant information of the “Change the following part in the following manner” request separately available and to connect it to the corresponding part in the PLM system, as this is the only way to establish relationships. The fact that the individual change items are listed in the request alone does not constitute a complete digital thread and it is not just the information about the change itself that needs to be available in digital form and connected to the change documentation, but also the resulting task.