Tech-Clarity’s new eBook, Integrating Data and Processes Across the Product Digital Thread, argues that the product digital thread is an essential component of digital transformation in manufacturing industries. Moreover, it contends that the product digital thread “simply is not possible without integration.”
An independent research firm dedicated to making the business value of technology clear, Tech-Clarity focuses on the digital thread around product data, which puts product-related data into context, as distinguished from the full digital thread that includes the product and extends well beyond it. The company surveyed 138 manufacturers to find out how manufacturing companies overcame challenges to achieve the product digital thread and what advantages they’re receiving as a result.
Why Integration Is Critical
Two-thirds of responding manufacturers ranked the importance of the digital thread to their success and profitability as either important or critical. Even more—69% of them—reported integration as important or critical to achieving their product digital thread objectives. This makes sense, Tech-Clarity notes, since “the product digital thread requires assembly.” It doesn’t come from a single system, but from an ecosystem of applications and data sources. The eBook goes on, “the digital thread is about creating, managing, and leveraging crucial product data and the relationships between data elements.”
The challenge for most manufacturers is that they don’t have “fully integrated ERP, PLM, or supply chain systems, let alone integration across these and others that carry crucial product information.” All too frequently, integration efforts haven’t kept pace with the desire and need for contextual, multi-disciplinary information that can deliver important insights. As a result, only 26% of manufacturers surveyed reported significant integration, while 63% reported only some integration.
The current reality is most manufacturers are living with poorly integrated product data, which generates data errors and inconsistencies, duplicate entry into multiple systems, and retrieval from multiple systems—which means significant wasted time and resources. To top it all off, 43% of survey respondents report that their product data is not timely—a significant disadvantage for making informed business decisions.
Integration Challenges
Manufacturers are likely to encounter difficulties at three phases of their integration journey: implementation, operation, and maintenance. Implementation issues represent the biggest block of potential challenges, because organizations must content with everything from business challenges, such as justifying projects and finding knowledgeable resources, to the technical and functional challenges of getting two disparate systems to communicate with each other, to the challenge of forging a new path based on an organization’s unique needs and goals.
While it may be tempting to think the hard part is over when the integration of data and applications is complete, there are still a variety of issues that must be dealt with in the operations phase. Some 53% of manufacturers surveyed report the most common issue is handling exceptions, though scalability, security, and losing data also crop up frequently.
Integration maintenance is another area that can present challenges. “Manufacturers report that managing change is difficult, including both keeping up with releases for different systems and adjusting as business processes change,” Tech-Clarity says, adding, “There is clearly room for improvement, and it’s no surprise that manufacturers lack the integration they need.”
What Successful Integrators Teach Us
Because it’s difficult to assess integration effectiveness, Tech-Clarity identifies a set of Top Performers—the 25% of respondents with the most effective digital thread integration—and examines their processes and results. This benchmark data can hopefully provide a guide to help other manufacturers improve their own integration processes.
As might be expected, Top Performers face data challenges less frequently, such as multiple system entry or retrieval, and their robust integration capabilities drive better business performance. Tech-Clarity says, “We believe that the Top Performers’ better ability to implement, operate, and maintain integration makes these operational advantages possible, setting the stage for greater business performance from higher efficiency, faster development, more timely data, better decisions, and more.” In particular, Tech-Clarity’s survey results show that investing in integration capabilities makes manufacturers better able to maintain their product digital thread integration, as well as adapt it as necessary to accommodate change.
What You Can Do to Improve Your Product Digital Thread
Ultimately, Tech-Clarity concludes that there’s no single pathway to success, no single process or technology that solved all Top Performers’ integration challenges—except, perhaps, that they make integration a focus of the journey to developing the product digital twin. Flexibility and adaptability are also important, as the eBook reports, Top Performers “develop a collection of capabilities, evaluate each situation, and apply the most effective approach available.”
The eBook contains more detail about survey responses, common challenges manufacturers face in the integration process, and best practices gleaned from Top Performers’ experience. Read Integrating Data and Processes Across the Product Digital Thread for more.
