Exposing Data in Context: Enhancing Decision-Making with Digital Threads

Turning data into actionable insights for smarter product development

This is the fourth and final article in Michael Finocchiaro’s Digital Threads and Aras Innovator® series. The first post, Working Concurrently and Collaborating Seamlessly with Digital Threads, focused on how digital threads enable collaboration between teams in real-time, improving cross functional efficiency. The second, Enabling Bidirectional Traceability with Digital Threads: Safeguarding Quality and Compliance, explored the critical role of bidirectional traceability to ensure compliance, manage risk, and improve product quality. The third post, Connecting Siloed Data Models with Digital Threads: The Key to Unified Product Development discussed how digital threads integrate disparate data models across various systems to provide a single source of truth.

Today’s blog highlights how digital threads expose data in context, enabling more informed decision-making and improving overall product lifecycle management.

“One of the greatest benefits of a digital thread is the ability to provide contextualized data to the right people at the right time. This capability empowers decision-makers with the full picture, helping them mitigate risks and drive innovation.”
— Jim Brown, president, Tech-Clarity

In today’s data-driven industries, organizations generate and collect more data than ever before. However, this data remains fragmented and isolated without the right tools and systems to process it, creating significant decision-making challenges. The sheer volume of data distributed across various systems like ERP, PLM, MES, CAD, and other specialized tools often prevents decision-makers from fully understanding the impact of changes or identifying risks early enough.

The key to unlocking the potential of this data is context. Contextualized data provides a holistic view of the entire product lifecycle and allows businesses to act on real-time, actionable insights. This is where the digital thread steps in. By connecting disparate data across functions and phases of the product lifecycle, digital threads allow decision-makers to expose data in context, transforming isolated data points into comprehensive, actionable information.

Aras Innovator® is critical in helping organizations create and manage digital threads. Its ability to integrate and contextualize data from various sources allows engineers, designers, and business leaders to make informed decisions, reduce costly rework, and improve product quality. In this article, we will explore how digital threads help expose data in context and provide a real-world example in shipbuilding.

The problem with isolated data in product development

In many organizations, data is fragmented across various teams and tools, leading to several key challenges:

1. Disjointed decisions: Teams working in isolation make decisions based on incomplete or outdated information. For instance, engineering teams may design a product without knowing the limitations in manufacturing or service processes, leading to costly redesigns later.
2. Lack of real-time insights: Often, data resides in different systems or departments, creating bottlenecks and delays in gaining the information needed for timely decision-making. This lack of visibility can slow the entire product development process, reducing efficiency and increasing time-to-market.
3. Limited collaboration across teams: Data silos hinder collaboration. When each department works in its bubble, cross-functional teams fail to understand how their work impacts the rest of the organization. This can result in misalignment between engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain functions.
4. Increased risk of errors and rework: The risk of errors increases when decisions are made without considering the broader context. For example, a design modification might make sense from a technical standpoint but could negatively affect downstream manufacturing or maintenance operations.

Due to this lack of visibility, organizations in all industries face heightened risks. Asset-intensive industries must carefully manage data around the lifecycle of physical assets, while complex construction projects that rely on BIM models require seamless coordination between various stakeholders. Continuous manufacturers scaling up from smaller lab runs to a full production capability could run into issues requiring formula changes in the upstream systems. Discrete manufacturers could find issues in the manufacturing process using predictive maintenance. However, if the original design issues are not transmitted to engineering, the next design risks having the same issues. In all cases, fragmented data can lead to project delays, cost overruns, and regulatory compliance issues.

How digital threads provide contextualized data for better decision-making

“By exposing data in context, digital threads transform isolated information into actionable insights. This is the key to making faster, more informed decisions, allowing companies to optimize product development and reduce costly rework.”
— Tom Mainelli, group vice president, Devices and Consumer Research, IDC

A digital thread provides more than just a data link across the product lifecycle; it establishes a contextual framework for understanding how different data points relate at each stage, from design through end-of-life. By creating a “semantic layer of connectivity”, a digital thread clarifies the relationships between data from diverse sources and stages, offering what can be described as a single source of truth for each phase. Rather than interpreting data as isolated points, the digital thread ensures that, as a product evolves, each lifecycle stage can access precisely the insights it needs, with context specific to that phase. This approach, as Aras Innovator enables, reduces the guesswork involved in interpreting data connections and supports real-time feedback loops, enhancing decision-making throughout development and beyond. Some of the features of Aras Innovator that allow this include:

1. Unified data platform due to flexible data modeling: Aras Innovator integrates data from multiple systems, such as ERP, PLM, BIM models, and asset management tools, providing a complete view of a product or asset’s history and current status. Exposing data in context allows users to access relevant information in real-time, regardless of where the data originates.
2. Cross-functional collaboration thanks to low-code API management: By connecting teams across engineering, manufacturing, and service functions, Aras facilitates collaboration and ensures everyone works from the same, up-to-date data. For example, if a maintenance team updates the condition of an asset, that information is immediately available to the engineering team for future design improvements or redesign.
3. Contextual data for decision-making: Aras Innovator helps teams visualize the impact of their decisions by showing how changes to one component or process will affect other areas. This visibility reduces the chances of unintended consequences. For example, a design change can be evaluated for its impact on supply chain costs, manufacturing timelines, and service requirements.
4. Real-time updates and impact analysis: As changes occur in one area, the digital thread allows teams to see how these changes impact downstream processes. This real-time flow of information ensures that decisions are made with the full context in mind, reducing rework and streamlining the development cycle.

Aras-AVEVA alliance and plant data in context

The exciting alliance between Aras and AVEVA will bring even more context into the picture for EPCs and owner-operators for all kinds of industrial plants, such as chemical factories or nuclear facilities. As presented by Benjamin Loubet of AVEVA at Aras Connect Paris in October 2024, while AVEVA will continue to provide services for data aggregation and sharing, Aras Innovator will be used for data and process management. Besides the data-centric deliverables already available in the platform, the alliance will provide unified requirements, change, and BOM management, supplier collaboration, and configuration management over time. This means that all the plant data for plant design, engineering, and maintenance will be unified by Aras Innovator’s digital thread.

Artificial intelligence and data in context

One other key game changer for data in context will be the addition of AI to the Aras Innovator platform. As described by Anthony Ponceot of Aras at Aras Connect Paris, Aras will be delivering AI-powered features to contextualize products given all the related data that is connected to the Aras Innovator system to drive the next generation of product innovation toward transformative product insights. Some examples that Aras is working on include requirements as a service, the syndication of digital twins, continuous design streams, and AI-infused engineering. You can read a field report about that conference here.

Seaspan Shipyards charts a course for smoother PLM waters with Aras

Customer requirements

Seaspan Shipyards, a crucial player in Canada’s national shipbuilding strategy, faced significant challenges in managing complex shipbuilding projects. They needed a comprehensive solution to establish a single source of truth for all product data and implement effective change management across their long-term projects. With a geographically dispersed workforce, enabling seamless collaboration was paramount. Seaspan required a unified ecosystem with accurate, up-to-date project data to avoid costly changes, delays, and increased expenses. Moreover, given the scope of their operations across three facilities in Vancouver and Victoria, BC, they needed a scalable solution capable of managing multiple project phases simultaneously.

Aras Innovator implementation

Seaspan with the help of Aras partner Javelin Technologies deployed Aras Innovator as their centralized PLM platform to address these challenges. The implementation followed a two-phased approach:

PHASE 1: From 2013 to 2017, they focused on document-centric management, converting physical documents to digital formats.

PHASE 2: From 2018 onward, they shifted to a product-data-centric PLM approach, expanding their user base from 750 to 1,100.

Seaspan integrated Aras with their existing 2D and 3D modeling suites, MRP, and ERP systems to create a comprehensive PLM ecosystem. They customized a requirements management module to manage customer contracts and migrated their BOMs from Excel to Aras, creating a master parts catalog. To ensure the success of this initiative, Seaspan established a formal PLM program with a steering committee and dedicated resources to manage the PLM ecosystem effectively.

Business benefits

The implementation of Aras Innovator yielded significant benefits for Seaspan Shipyards. It dramatically improved traceability across the product lifecycle and enhanced their change management capabilities – a crucial factor in the dynamic shipbuilding industry. The solution provided increased visibility into all product information, creating a “one-stop shop” that streamlined operations and decision-making processes.

Expanding the user base to 1100 indicated broader adoption and utility across the organization. Aras Innovator enabled more effective management of Seaspan’s geographically dispersed workforce, facilitating collaboration and consistency in project execution. It also improved their ability to manage complex data beyond simple spreadsheets, enhancing their capability to understand and manage the implications of changes throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Ultimately, implementing Aras Innovator has been instrumental in Seaspan’s transition towards becoming a world-class shipyard, positioning it to more effectively and efficiently meet the demands of Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy. Seaspan acknowledged the importance of the partner relationship with Javelin Technologies in helping to identify industry trends and other ways to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and ways to realize their vision and meet their objectives.

Final thoughts

“Digital Threads offer essential context for the large amounts of data collected during a product’s lifecycle. Data analysts shouldn’t have to make assumptions about how various data sources are linked. By establishing a semantic layer of connectivity, Digital Threads reduce guesswork and simplify the extraction of insights from raw data feeds. This facilitates real-time feedback loops, supporting timely and informed decision-making.”
— Rob McAveney, CTO Aras

In today’s data-rich environment, the challenge lies not in acquiring information, but in extracting meaningful insights. Here’s where Aras Innovator’s digital threads come in – they act as a powerful tool to expose data in context. By weaving together information from disparate systems, Aras Innovator provides a holistic view of the product lifecycle, empowering decision-makers with the critical context they need to make informed choices.

This contextualization unlocks a range of benefits:

• Improved decision-making: With a clear understanding of how changes impact different areas, teams can make data-driven decisions that minimize unintended consequences and optimize the entire product development process.
• Reduced risk of errors and rework: By exposing potential issues upfront, digital threads allow teams to identify and address problems early on, minimizing costly rework and delays.
• Enhanced collaboration: Aras facilitates seamless collaboration across departments by providing a single source of truth for all stakeholders, ensuring everyone is working from the same page.

Seaspan Shipyards’ success story demonstrates that leveraging Aras Innovator’s digital threads to expose data in context can be a game-changer for organizations struggling with complex projects and siloed information.

Ready to unlock the true potential of your data and streamline your product development? Check out the new guided tour on aras.com.