Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1504794
AUGUST 2023 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 13 Of course, in manufacturing, you have digi- tal twins for all kinds of things. ey're mostly for simulating the manufacturing processes, or the engagement between robotics and our air- planes. ere are dozens upon dozens of twins, and they're all pieces of the puzzle. Part of the issue here is that we really need to get aca- demia, government, and industry involved so that we can better use academia. ey could be fundamental in increasing our overall capabili- ties in modeling and simulation. We will need all the help we can get. Matties: Digital twin is designed to mirror a real-world object. How close are we to that now? Keep in mind that it can take 10 years of test- ing to develop the digital twin. ey're good because they're modeled aer real life and, at that point, they're not really simulations. ey've used physical flight test data or struc- tural data to populate the models. Dr. Will Roper was at the DoD for a long time, and his idea for soware was always laptop-to-air- plane. Today, it's laptop-to-very-expensive- laboratories-to-airplane. We're looking long- term to get there. Matties: When you look at your manufactur- ing tools and processes, how are you creating that digital twin so you can predict the outcome for the factory? Let me give you some examples. In the case of circuit board production, you want to program it to lay out the board, then you want to have an inspection system that compares that finished board in a very fast manner to the finished prod- uct and validates that everything is where it's supposed to be. We're doing the same thing on our airplanes: We use laser scanning and struc- tured light to compare as-designed to as-built 3D configurations. If the technology had been invented a little earlier, we could have saved a lot of money because you could find issues very early in production instead of waiting for the tolerance to come back and bite you. Matties: How fast can a manufacturer capture the equipment's operating windows, high and low, and throughput into a system so they can predict or use that to create a manufacturing digital twin in their factory? Frankly, the tools are there at the lowest level. Take the F-22: We didn't have enough airplanes when I worked that program to really justify a