Abstract

Integrating simulation within a PLM-based digital thread is an essential step toward modernizing engineering processes, interacting with comprehensive virtual environments, increasing customer/vendor engagement, improving threat response timelines, fostering new technology, reducing documentation cost, and achieving sustainment affordability. While traditional simulations, built manually and residing on local workstations, benefit from perceived advantages in model setup time and results generation, they rarely digitally enrich or become enriched by the enterprise engineering functions around them. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has undertaken an initiative to digitally transform our mission-critical PLM enterprise to include integrated simulation that connects requirements to systems models, engineering data, fabrication and V&V. A primary goal is to demonstrate the cumulative time savings experienced by all users of simulation models and the performance prediction data they produce, over the project lifetime. Secondly, this platform will lay the groundwork for significant growth in the digital domain in the coming years, including real-time multi-objective requirements development with customer organizations as well as simulation-informed MBSE-based trade studies. Finally, with both simulation and source data readily accessible from the digital thread, the entire product team can visualize full process traceability, audit revision synchronicity and rapidly execute on critical program decisions. To accomplish this, we have employed an extensible, low-code PLM platform and automation templates. The content of the digital thread is highly customized to our needs, allowing us to manage source data and models to comply with organization-specific policies. This level of customization is especially important in non-production prototyping environments like ours, as programs require different balances between fully-informed Digital Twins and rapid fabrication schedules. Additional challenges include extreme diversity in our technology pipeline and unique, mission-critical processes between programs. We will discuss multiple simulation workflows, presented in context with their digital thread, as well as the benefits future capabilities such as artificial intelligence can bring to the PLM user experience.