Abstract

Digital Transformation is often used to cover many different digitalisation activities that can often cost a lot to implement and yield little overall benefit. However, true digital transformation changes processes in ways that solve real business challenges and make transformative business benefits. We have seen many businesses achieve true digital transformation like this by digitising their materials processes and data. For an engineering enterprise, the digital transformation journey typically starts by focusing on the product definition and working through the various value adding processes required to create it. The ‘digital thread’ being the framework that connects the data flows. Materials data is a fundamental component in any product’s definition, design and simulation. It therefore makes sense that many engineering companies treat the digitalisation of materials data as one of the first steps in achieving their overall digital transformation. The value of this transformation and delineating the ‘digital thread’ for materials data is clear. Data is structured, standardized, and easy to find, enterprise-wide, adding value by bringing added context for the material’s application. This in turn results in time and cost savings across the engineering functions. The challenge comes in finding the right technology protocol to achieve the reuse of the above data across functions, processes, and applications. But, also in creating the culture and leadership buy-in to make it happen. This presentation aims to take a step-by-step approach through the technology journey in achieving the above using Ansys Granta MI - a leading materials management solution from Ansys. We follow practical steps with tangible case studies from industry that follow the end-to-end requirements for engineering materials data from testing in labs to their application in leading CAD and CAE software products. The idea being that these practical steps form a roadmap that will also help in creating a culture of awareness and ultimately leadership buy-in.