Working Concurrently and Collaborating Seamlessly with Digital Threads

This blog is the first in a four-part series by guest blogger Michael Finocchiaro, Senior PLM Architect, digital thread expert, and principal at Finocchiaro Consulting, LLC, Paris, France.

Breaking down barriers to cross-functional collaboration

“The future of product development lies in a connected and collaborative ecosystem. Digital threads allow different teams to collaborate concurrently, breaking down silos and enabling faster, more informed decisions.”
— Tom Gill, Senior Consultant, CIMdata

Collaboration is hard.

How can you enable multidisciplinary collaboration when critical product data resides in diverse systems, each requiring separate logins, following divergent processes, and using different formats? How can you reduce communication breakdowns, inefficiencies, and costly delays caused by disparate systems? Digital thread is an emerging approach for integrating product data throughout the entire product lifecycle as a robust way of connecting data that originates in different systems so it can be used during the design, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance processes. By establishing robust and continuous system connections, digital thread enables simultaneous work and real-time collaboration across departments.

In this blog, we will explore how digital thread overcomes traditional barriers to collaboration and empowers teams to work concurrently, ultimately expediting product development and accelerating innovation.

Challenges of traditional collaboration in product development

Communication gaps between departments such as engineering, manufacturing, and customer service or maintenance inhibit cross-domain collaboration in the product development process because each team often operates in isolation, using its tools and systems, resulting in isolated data silos, duplicated efforts, and fragmented workflows. The lack of traceability and synchronization can lead to various challenges:

• Delayed feedback loops: Separate engineering, manufacturing, and service teams often receive important feedback late in the design phase, resulting in rework and delays.
• Data inconsistency: Multiple versions of product data across different tools and systems lead to design duplication, production inefficiencies, and quality control errors.
• Slower decision-making: Precious time is lost when multiple systems need to be consulted, and results aggregated manually to obtain a comprehensive set of facts on which to base decisions.
• Missed opportunities for innovation: Expertise is dispersed across different teams, and without effective communication, improvements and ideas from one area that could benefit another cannot cross disciplinary boundaries.

Organizations are embracing digital thread technology to address these challenges, streamline workflows, and enable seamless and concurrent collaboration among teams. Embracing the concept of a digital thread promises to enhance collaboration, accelerate product development, and achieve greater efficiency and innovation in the manufacturing industry.

How digital thread facilitates concurrent engineering

“The digital thread is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a foundational technology for driving innovation. By enabling real-time collaboration across engineering, production, and service, organizations can break down silos and accelerate their time to market.”
— Paul Miller, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

A digital thread creates bidirectional data, process, and decision traceability throughout the product lifecycle, ensuring every department can access up-to-date and consistent product information in context. By integrating diverse systems (like PLM, CAD, ALM, and ERP), a digital thread makes it possible for multiple teams to work concurrently, even across separate phases of product development.

In the automotive industry, where the development of complex systems like electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving technology, and connected cars is highly interdisciplinary, concurrent engineering is essential to reduce time-to-market and ensure seamless collaboration across departments. With a digital thread, automotive companies can connect teams working on various components—such as powertrains, electronics, and safety systems—in real-time.

For instance, when designing an EV, a digital thread allows teams responsible for the mechanical design of the battery housing to work simultaneously with those developing the electrical or thermal management systems. Changes made by the mechanical team, such as modifications to the battery layout, are instantly visible to the electrical team, allowing them to adjust wiring configurations or component placements in real-time. This concurrent approach prevents downstream errors and enables faster, data-driven decision-making. The integration of electrical and mechanical data and real-time data sharing is critical for automotive OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and suppliers as they work on complex vehicle architectures and work around strict regulatory requirements. Such concurrency is not possible without an underlying digital thread that enables data traceability between different engineering domains.

Improving data connectivity and cross-functional collaboration at Toyota Motor Europe

Toyota Motor Europe (TME), responsible for overseeing Toyota’s manufacturing in Europe, engineering operations, and wholesale marketing, faced significant challenges in its vehicle performance engineering division. The division relied on a model-based design (MBD) approach to manage modern car design, but TME’s engineers were bogged down by manual processes and complex spreadsheets for data sharing, which caused inefficiencies and inconsistencies in data quality due to the lack of integration across teams.

The MBD approach requires constant exchange of large volumes of data between engineering teams. Unfortunately, past reliance on spreadsheets led to slowdowns, an increasing lack of confidence in the accuracy of the data, and poor configuration control. Recognizing the need for a new solution, TME partnered with Aras to create a managed digital thread to centralize data management.

PLM requirements for Toyota Motor Europe’s digital transformation

Toyota’s primary objectives were:

1. Establish a “single source of truth”: TME needed a unified digital thread to connect all engineering data in one location, ensuring everyone could access accurate, real-time information. This access was especially critical for tracking architectural variants and related simulations.
2. Reduce lead times and workload: Manual spreadsheet-based processes were time-consuming and error-prone. TME aimed to reduce lead times by automating data flow between teams.
3. Improve data quality and consistency: TME needed to eliminate inconsistencies, ensure data quality, and create reliable models by connecting relevant data coherently.
4. Enhance collaboration across teams: The goal was to break down silos between engineering groups by connecting processes and people through the digital thread.

As Ernesto Mottola, Ph.D., Vehicle Performance Engineering at TME, put it, “connecting data – connecting processes – connecting people.” The first step in their digital thread transformation was to connect engineering data to the product’s broader system architecture, allowing automation of simulation studies and improved collaboration.

Successes achieved through Aras Innovator

Working closely with Aras and their integration partner Inensia, Toyota Motor Europe began transforming its data management processes. The team first extended Aras Innovator’s data model to meet TME’s Engineering Data Management (EDM) requirements, including structures and relationships specific to vehicle design.

After identifying critical processes for improvement, the team rolled out phase two, leveraging Aras Innovator’s revision, lifecycle, workflow, and access management capabilities. Using Agile methodology, TME and Aras collaboratively developed a pilot solution, refining it until achieving a minimum viable product (MVP). In true Toyota Kaizen fashion, the system continues to be enhanced as new needs arise.

This rapid implementation was enabled by the flexibility of the Aras platform, designed for scalability and adaptability. The platform’s low-code configuration allowed TME’s teams to quickly modify the data model to fit specific needs without disrupting workflows.

Key Results: Centralized data management and improved collaboration

For Toyota Motor Europe, the most noticeable change was the centralized digital thread and automated workflows. All variant-design-simulation relationships are now stored in Aras Innovator, giving engineering teams confidence in data accuracy and quality.

Key benefits realized include:

• 28% decrease in process lead time: Automating data-sharing processes significantly reduced time managing engineering data.
• 41% reduction in time expenditure: Engineering teams spend less time manually updating data, freeing them to focus on innovation.
• Improved data quality and consistency: The digital thread ensures all teams access accurate data, improving simulation reliability.
• Enhanced collaboration: Real-time access to centralized data enabled effective collaboration across distributed teams, breaking down barriers between disciplines.

Expanding the digital thread beyond engineering

The success of the digital thread within vehicle performance engineering inspired other groups within Toyota Motor Europe to embrace the approach. Multiple departments now leverage Aras Innovator to manage processes such as supply chain and manufacturing. By unifying data access across the organization, Toyota laid the groundwork for a more connected and efficient future. The platform’s scalability and flexibility mean it will continue to support Toyota’s evolving needs and innovations.

“To remain competitive, manufacturers need to embrace concurrent engineering practices supported by digital thread technology. This enables design, production, and service teams to collaborate in real-time, streamlining workflows and significantly reducing development cycles.”
— John Clemons, Senior Analyst, Manufacturing.com

Toyota Motor Europe’s partnership with Aras demonstrates the power of digital thread in transforming manual spreadsheets into automated digital workflows. By integrating and automating data management processes, TME was able to significantly reduce lead times, improve data quality, and foster greater collaboration between engineering teams. With the successful implementation of a digital thread in its vehicle performance division, Toyota Motor Europe has become a prime example of how organizations can leverage PLM platforms like Aras Innovator to achieve a single source of truth that connects people, processes, and data, driving improved decision-making and operational efficiency.

Read the full customer story here to learn more about how TME’s partnership with Aras has impacted their digital transformation.