Mannheim, January 12th, 2021

 

With the help of PLM, Buran would undoubtedly have been one of today's success stories

Buran, the Russian counterpart to the space shuttle, failed in 1993 due to financial difficulties. It only managed a single unmanned mission into space. The excessive development costs amassed over 17 years were certainly one reason for this. But what tools could have been used to manage the product development process, which began back in the 1970s? And would the Russian space program perhaps still be in existence today if product lifecycle management systems had been around back then to control data flows and processes from end to end in a transparent and agile manner across an entire company? A look back.

Together with at least 100 subcontractors, the approximately 7,000 members of the project team must have produced countless CAD drawings. It's hard to imagine how they managed them with all the changes and different versions, as it wasn't until the 1980s that the first management systems for CAD drawings appeared on the market. Characteristics tables were used to classify the components and structure the products. This enabled objects to be located quickly and encouraged the reuse of components. However, there was no connection to the deliverables from the other disciplines. Mechanical development defined the framework and the other disciplines followed their lead. The interdisciplinary coordination process using ancillary documents in this large, distributed Buran project team must have been correspondingly complex.

Downstream departments such as procurement, warehousing and manufacturing did not receive the information relevant to them until development had been completed, and primarily as printouts or handwritten lists. This meant that the process of writing the CNC programs and manually entering the BOMs in their systems was both time-consuming and error-prone. All in all, the Buran comprised approximately 2 million individual parts.

Single source of truth for fully integrated product engineering

The first product data management (PDM) systems appeared on the market in the 1990s with the aim of shortening the time to market, reducing development costs and improving product quality. Yet these engineering databases were still used to organize only the mechanical products. It was now helpful that a cleverly constructed system architecture revealed dependencies. However, they were still unable to represent objects such as circuit diagrams, connection lists, the control cabinet layout, Gerber data, assembly plans for the electronics or information from fluid engineering.

So while the various development departments continued to work more or less independently of each other, companies started looking at initial cross-departmental system integration in the 1990s. With the aim of optimizing materials management and production in mind, machine data was now transferred to the CNC machine digitally, and the same applied to the transfer of BOMs to the purchasing departments.

As a result, the focus increasingly shifted to the considerable potential for efficiencies offered by end-to-end processes throughout an entire company. In the early 2000s, the idea of product lifecycle management (PLM) as a single source of truth – a consistent, fully transparent database for the entire product – was born. It did away with data silos and finally ensured reliable versioning. This heralded the establishment of the digital twin.

Events such as the transfer of BOMs to the ERP system or the saving of a new CAD version were used to trigger the downstream process.

The Buran in an agile value-added network

Since around 2010, new technologies have been linking the world of engineering with the extended supply chain. Thanks to standardized adapters, it is becoming increasingly easy to use product data in areas such as procurement, logistics, production, service and maintenance. And these standard interfaces can be adapted increasingly easily to individual requirements. Initially, this was done via development projects, later via parameters, and nowadays also via apps and microservices.

If they had had a PLM system, the Buran team would have shared documents and knowledge and executed processes reliably and efficiently using templates and best practices. The 100 subcontractors would have fully integrated these processes.

Workflows that are digitalized, automated and traceable in this way transform the value chain into an efficient value-added network that not only demonstrably shortens innovation cycles but also increases project profitability. Such an approach harmonizes distributed development centers and production and simplifies customized mass production with a lot size of 1 as demanded by today’s markets.

PLM links the digital twin to the physical product

The future of both production and product is smart. The digital twin plays a key role in this context, namely as a data source for smart technologies. IoT, augmented reality, big data, and the like provide insights into the customer experience and the behavior of smart, connected products. Once again, PLM acts as a valuable link between the virtual and real worlds, making it easier to improve products.

If it had had efficient, PLM-based product development systems, Russia would undoubtedly not have discontinued its space program. Instead, we would likely be seeing a networked, partially autonomous Buran in operation today.