Harnessing the Production Digital Twin for Aerospace – Summary
As the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry shifts to accommodate demands for higher production volumes and product variance, aerospace manufacturers are exploring new strategies utilizing automation, adaptive production, and smart manufacturing. While these strategies can bring many benefits to production processes, implementing them successfully can be expensive and prone to errors that cost extra time and money to correct. Fortunately, manufacturers can ensure their smooth implementations while guaranteeing a full return-on-investment with the production digital twin.
In the latest episode of Talking Aerospace Today, Todd Tuthill, Vice President of Aerospace, Defense, and Marine for Siemens Digital Industries Software, is joined by Sunil Chhabra, from Portfolio Development in manufacturing engineering for Siemens. Together, they define what exactly the production digital twin is and how it can benefit aerospace manufacturing across the production lifecycle.
Defining the production digital twin
When people hear the words “digital twin,” odds are the first thing that comes to mind is the product digital twin, a virtual representation of a physical product. The product digital twin enables engineers to model a product digitally before ever building a physical prototype. In aerospace, this can include a wiring system, engine turbines, airplane wings, and other such components and systems. With this virtual model, engineers can design, simulate, and optimize their products without having to spend money and resources and repeated physical testing.
According to Todd and Sunil, the production digital twin largely applies the same principles and functions, only to whole production processes rather than products. The scale of the production digital twin can change depending on the needs of the manufacturer. It can model anything from a single CNC machine to an entire factory, including its assembly lines, movements of material, and even individual humans and their interactions with onsite machines. The ability to model so much makes the production digital twin and vital tool in the future of aerospace manufacturing.
The virtual factory
Manufacturing engineers can do all sorts of things with the model of their production processes. Much like a product digital twin with its product, the production digital twin can be used to simulate modeled processes in a variety of scenarios, which can then be used to analyze the impacts of decisions and changes on cost, quality, and timing. With these insights, manufacturers can identify errors early, optimize processes, and guarantee their financial viability.
This is especially critical when implementing strategies with new automated, adaptive, or smart technologies in aerospace manufacturing. New strategies can present new issues manufacturing engineers may not anticipate, so the production digital twin can help find such issues before the physical processes ever begin construction, ensuring no further time and money is spent making corrections. All the while, these processes are better suited to deal with the higher production volumes and variance being demanded by the A&D industry.
Beyond factory planning
However, the benefits of the production digital twin do not stop once the planning and construction/refitting of production processes are complete. The production digital twin can model processes during their operation as well, providing data and analysis that can be used to optimize them even further.
Todd and Sunil give an example of how this can be done involving the use of IoT (Internet of Things) sensors. These sensors can be integrated into the machines on an assembly line and feed real-time data into the production digital twin for analysis. The applications of this data are numerous, from increasing efficiency identifying areas lagging behind in productivity to establishing predictive maintenance protocols. With the production digital twin, optimization of aerospace manufacturing processes extends beyond initial planning, across the whole production lifecycle.
The transformation of aerospace manufacturing is going to be a monumental task, whether manufacturers are refitting existing processes with new technologies or building new factories entirely. With the production digital twin, at least, the process can be made easier by spotting potential issues before they arise and ensuring production processes are best suited to meet the industry’s demands, ensuring the aircraft and spacecraft of the future are ready for launch on time.
Be sure to listen to Talking Aerospace Today to learn more about the production digital twin and the transformation of aerospace manufacturing.
Siemens Digital Industries Software helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Siemens’ software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn today’s ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries. Siemens Digital Industries Software – Accelerating transformation.
