专家问答: 掌握“数字孪生”与“数字线程”技术：航空航天与国防（A&D）领域数字化的关键所在 | Mastering Digital Twins And Digital Threads: The Keys To Digitalization In A&D

“数字孪生”和“数字线程”是一切数字化战略的关键要素；人们都在谈论它们，但很少有公司能够为我们明确介绍这些术语究竟意指何物。《航空周刊》对西门子数字工业软件公司 A&D 战略部总监约翰·奥康纳（John O’Connor）进行了采访，了解数字化相关以及国防企业如何凭借更为先进的工具获取优势等问题。

Digital twins and digital threads are key elements of any digitalization strategy; everyone is talking about them, but few companies say what exactly they mean by the terms. Aviation Week interviews John O’Connor, Director, A&D Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software about digitalization and how better tools can give defense companies an edge.

问：为什么速度在航空航天领域如此重要？

Q Why is speed so important in the aerospace sector?

答：企业创新和供应产品的速度会直接影响其发展与盈利的潜力。这种潜力常采用新产品开发周期这一指标来衡量。当下许多航空航天与国防（A&D）企业正投资于数字化，以期提高它们在新产品开发周期这一指标上的表现。
西门子推出了企业评估，将企业划分为“战略领导者”、“高价创新者”、“高效模仿者”和“挣扎落伍者”，帮助企业了解他们在数字化成熟度竞争中的定位。

“挣扎落伍者”没有创造出定义明确的设计产品，它们在一些情形中仍完全依赖基于稿纸的  2D 设计方法。这些公司远远落后于技术发展水平，它们的进度常落后于计划，且耗资往往超出预算开支。“高价创新者”制造出了十分出色的高性能产品，但产量非常小。虽然它们的产品得到了高度优化和充分定义，但它们在过渡到制造阶段时往往会失败，因为他们不能有效地生产设计产品。“高效模仿者”具备良好的内部开发流程，但缺乏开发创新性概念潜力的必要能力。

最后，“战略领导者”综合了“高价创新者”与“高效模仿者”的最佳特质。这些企业具备高速运作的工程流程，设计与生产方式具备良好的数字化表征，数据流动顺畅。这是凭借高保真“数字孪生”与整个开发过程中强有力的“数字线程”实现的。虽然有许多成功因素需要考虑，但这些企业的数字化战略是关键。

A: The speed with which companies innovate and bring products to customers has a direct bearing on their potential for growth and profitability. Product development cycle time is commonly used to measure this potential. Today many A&D companies are investing in digitalization to improve their performance against this metric.

Siemens offers an evaluation to help companies understand how well they are positioned to compete in terms of digitalization maturity. It positions companies into four categories: strategic leaders, expensive innovators, efficient imitators, and struggling laggards. “Struggling laggards” don’t create well defined designs, in some cases they still rely exclusively on 2D paper-based design methods. These companies are well behind the state of the art, they’re frequently behind schedule and often over budget. “Expensive innovators” make impressive, high-performance products, but they make very few of them. While their products are highly optimized and fully defined, they often fail when they transition into manufacturing because they can’t efficiently produce the design. “Efficient Imitators,” have good internal development processes but lack the capabilities necessary to exploit the potential of innovative concepts.

Finally, there are the “strategic leaders.” These companies combine the best characteristics of expensive innovators and efficient imitators. They have fast engineering processes and the flow of data is smooth with good digital representations of the design and its manufacturing methods. This is achieved with high fidelity digital twins coupled by strong digital threads across the development process. While there are many success factors to consider, their digitalization strategies are key.

问：你提及的“数字孪生”和“数字线程”是什么意思？

Q: What do you mean by digital twins and digital threads?

答：“数字孪生”是设计或制造过程的虚拟表现模型，它们具备绝对权威。“数字线程”与“数字孪生”相关，能够使这些模型游移于开发过程的各个阶段。“数字孪生”在沿着“数字线程”移动时会不断发展演进，为设计或制造过程中的每一步提供信息。

A: Digital twins are virtual representations of designs or manufacturing processes. They are fully authoritative. Associated with them are digital threads that move these representations through the phases of development. The digital twins evolve as they move along digital threads providing information for each step in the process.

Q: How do digital twins and threads fit into digitalization strategy?

问：“数字孪生”和“数字线程”如何融入数字化战略中呢？

答：从上面提到的数字化成熟度情况可以看出，“高价创新者”缺乏有效的“数字线程”，“高效模仿者”缺乏强力的“数字孪生”，而“挣扎落伍者”则两者都缺乏。

这些孪生与线程概念是有效实施数字化战略的核心。没有这两者，你就无法实现预期的业务成效。有鉴于此，西门子已经投资开发转发能力，以独特的互补方式整合这两个概念。

糟糕的孪生配有优秀的线程并不打紧，但优秀的孪生如果没有线程则不具备商业可行性。一个好的数字化战略要同时用到“数字孪生”和“数字线程”这两个概念，并利用它们来缩短新产品开发周期。

A: As you can see from the digitalization maturity discussion above, expensive innovators lack a useful digital thread, efficient imitators lack a strong digital twin, and struggling laggards lack both.

These twin and thread concepts are core to implementing a digitalization strategy that really works. You can’t achieve desired business outcomes without both. For this reason, Siemens has invested in delivering capabilities that integrate both concepts in a uniquely complementary way.

A bad twin with a great thread does not matter, a great twin without a thread is not commercially viable. Having a good digitalization strategy takes both concepts – digital twins and digital threads – and uses them to reduce product development cycle time.

问：数字化能在速度方面带来多大的差异？

Q: How much difference can digitalization make in terms of speed?

答：仅基于“数字孪生模型”，我们保守估计西门子 Xcelerator 数字商业平台可以比竞争对手的方案快 20% 。在多个产品周期中，这能帮助使用西门子 Xcelerator 商业平台的公司领先于其竞争对手整整一代产品。

A: Based on digital twin modeling alone, we conservatively believe that Siemens Xcelerator can be 20% faster than competing solutions. Over multiple product cycles this puts companies that use Siemens Xcelerator a full product generation ahead of their competition.

采访完整版请见 aviationweek.com/digitalization

To view the full interview, go to aviationweek.com/digitalization