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Digital twin and digital thread are terms that are used a lot in the industry today. Why are the digital twin and digital thread so important for collaboration today? Our chief analyst defines digital twin and digital thread and the important role they play in product development

Products are becoming more feature-rich and more complex. Many organizations increasingly rely on systems engineering. In this post, I’ll dive into some common issues with developing systems architectures. I will focus on how to increase collaboration between detailed design and systems engineering teams through a validation step right before detailed design starts.

Products are increasing in complexity at an astonishing rate. Smartphones are just one example: today’s devices combine the functionality of yesterday’s phones, cameras, calculators, and pagers and place desktop applications and internet browsers in the palms of our hands. Advancing electrification, mass miniaturization, and IoT-driven digitization are making a vast range of devices smarter and smaller.
To cope with these changes, manufacturers must transform the way they develop complex systems.

This post compares and contrasts the traditional and modern approaches to developing and verifying products.

During difficult times, startups can still prevail. This podcast feature’s Sabrina Paseman, founder of Fix the Mask. Fix the Mask is focused on supplying better masks in the face of COVID. Lifecycle Insights CEO Chad Jackson interviews Sabrina on Siemen’s podcast, Startups: Digitalization to Realization

Virtual reality and augmented reality are used in a variety of industrial settings, allowing manufacturers to visualize entities either in a virtual environment or the real world. Engineers can demonstrate a machine’s design and operation using VR. VR and AR can benefit the world of manufacturing, but throw virtual commissioning into the mix, and an entirely new world of possibilities presents itself.

Systems engineering practices help organizations mitigate and manage product complexity. When applied to electronics and electrical systems, systems engineering takes on a whole new meaning. Using this approach, teams break down a product’s requirements and functions with a high degree of granularity and allocate them to functions, logical architectures, and physical items. In doing so, they gain traceability that enables them to explore the impact of any design changes on requirements and make the best decisions possible.

This post explores some of the different areas where systems engineering makes a difference and how systems engineering enables traceability.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is everywhere. Products are undergoing a period of mass digitalization, with physical devices increasingly connecting to the online world and gathering and sharing data to help people optimize their daily lives. This post highlights some of these smart factory initiatives and explains the impact they have across a factory floor.

The value-added benefits are clear. But many organizations don’t know where to start when it comes to virtual commissioning. The implementation process is complex; it’s more than downloading a piece of software and expecting staff to master it immediately. Reaping the full rewards of virtual commissioning requires a measured and staged approach.

Customer demands and marketplace competition are placing engineers under mounting time pressures. An organization’s development schedules must shorten to keep pace with the industry and the wider market. Many established digital tools are now available to accelerate development lifecycles. Simulation is one of them.