What is digitalization? We’ve broken it down into two main definitions based on how the industry has described it.

First, digitalization is all about getting a complete digital definition of your product. That includes a holistic view of mechanical design with electrical and electronic design software. This digital definition is important to keep everybody on the same page. It is also used to assess performances and as a collaboration point. People can use this single, unambiguous source of truth to make informed and correct decisions. If there is no single definition for a digital product, then people will make decisions based on different definitions and impede the process of development.

The second component of digitalization is about executing and automating processes and procedures in development. This includes design release, approvals, tasks, change management, change processes, change requests, etc. There are many other activities that fall under that category in terms of processes that can be digitized, automated, tracked, and managed. It is crucial to understand the interaction between the complete digital definition and digital processes. The digital definition is used by digital processes to be the correct information people should be making decisions based off of.  The digital processes modify and mature the digital definition over time. This way, the digital definition becomes more complete and accurate with higher fidelity.

Those are the two main definitions for digitalization according to industry standards. We hope this helped. Comment below if you have more to add on the topic of digitalization. We’d love to hear from you!