Abstract

Amongst all phases of the lifecycle of an industrial product, the biggest potential for cost saving as well as for the optimization of product properties is offered during component design. The majority of the cost of a component is defined here since early decisions into the design affect all the phases coming afterwards – engineering, prototyping and, of course, manufacturing. On the other hand, creating the best product design means to take into account many aspects of manufacturability and all the expectations towards the behaviour of the fully assembled final product. It is obvious that a complete and synchronized data flow throughout the whole product lifecycle is very beneficial for lowest costs and the best quality. Smart manufacturing means to have a specific digital twin in each phase of the product lifecycle. Particularly, during design and engineering, virtual data can already be measured - clearly before any physical prototype is available for physical inspection. Thus, appropriate decisions affecting the design and manufacturing of a component can be made very early with respect to quantitative knowledge rather than guessing. Later, when physical measurements from prototypes or manufactured products are available, those can be utilized to validate and optimize the digital twins. The physical and the virtual world are fully connected. Information exchange between all stages of the product lifecycle is maintained: The connected data flow in parallel to the path of the real product through its lifecycle is called the digital thread. It helps to feed back the right information to the right place in the right time. This paper describes the Virtual Lifecycle Manufacturing (ViLMa), an engineering backbone for smart manufacturing. This framework connects between the various engineering applications like CAD, CAE, CAM and metrology. It is therefore very different from a PLM system that purely manages all the product-related data. The paper shows particular examples of industrial application. These examples illustrate how different technologies can be merged to reach the optimum benefit.