Enabling the Model Based Enterprise at Bosch Group
00:05 Business is speeding up. The cadence is higher in every industry, and there are many external pressures coming from the customer, but also internal pressures changing the way you are working. This places a high focus on your PLM strategy. The supply shortages we all see in the market have also had an immense impact on business. Companies cannot wait years for parts to be available in the required quantities. They need to rapidly redesign and validate systems to work with available components.
00:39 Companies that can do this will gain market share from those that cannot. Executing rapid design changes while maintaining the highest level of quality requires an end to end transformation of how products are conceptualized, designed, built, and brought to market. How can you develop and produce faster adapting to the needed speed of the business? I sat down with Olaf Kramer of Bosch, who's been instrumental in driving
01:12 digitalization from a central department point of view. While Bosch is a well known brand name, you might not realize just how large they are. With over 400,000 employees, 73,000 associates working in R&D at 129 locations worldwide, Bosch operates in four sectors; mobility, industrial technology, energy and building technology, and consumer goods. Addressing the challenges
01:43 of collaboration, closed loop quality, and concurrent engineering starts with building a strong PLM foundation for the digital thread. When we are talking about the holistic PLM, there is not just one solution that fits all of it. So keeping this diversity in mind and also keeping the view from a central department, the question to ask is what can you do within the different target architectures that we find in the different business areas for PLM?
02:16 And we identified, let's say, missing or weak elements in the architecture, and also we cross checked between the business segments in order to find out, hey, do we find, for example, one capability that is required in the different areas? We are not delivering, from the central department point of view, a fixed and ready solution, but we deliver building blocks and guidelines how to efficiently use
02:48 those building blocks in order to create scalable and modular approaches. You're creating a digital product definition as I understand it, but it's not a single digital product definition. It's basically a fit for you. So depending on the various businesses, you then decide on the product architecture and what should be common and what can be shared from that business unit. With the goal of reuse.
03:19 We want to add models in parallel to the documents in order that, for example, the models are machine readable so that we can connect working steps on that data. And that is one of the procedures how to do this, how to create those models. You always have to imagine this brown field environment that we have. As Bosch gets their proverbial digital house in order, Olaf has been focused on both improving the everyday life of an engineer
03:49 and the strategic digital transformation of the enterprise. Although we are working on this now for more than four years, I would still say regarding our capability to deliver data, to talk in models, we're still at the very beginning. So probably we don't know. I have maybe 5% of data shaped in models and where we really are close to something that could be described as a target state. But from the actual status, I would say we did a lot of the basic work,
04:22 of the homework, we created, let's say the essential building blocks that we need. But now we have to get it into the practice and that's what we are doing in terms of pilot project areas. For example, one of our business units, power tools, is where we are introducing the mechanical or digital master. We are combining this with the so called functional view. So that means we were taking the functions out of the model that we used in systems
04:54 engineering and we see, for example, the function and elements connected to the function later on procedure steps like the FMEA in quality and so on. It sounds like your approach is try it out with the division and then see with the business, put it into practice, so into production and then see how you can scale it. Yeah, we can scale it. And in parallel to these activities there are a number of other business units doing the same with their designs,
05:28 for example, with their platforms as a kind of fast follower internally. And we are exchanging. So that's also one of the characteristics working in networks and establishing networks. That's part of the things that we can do out of the central department's point of view. So encourage those people to exchange together in those networks and exchange information and lessons learned. With electronic circuit board production you
05:58 have those SMT automates that do the component placement on the surface parts and there was a correlation regarding the yield and a failure picture that we had with respect to the design and what we used, the digital model based representation of the circuit design and the failure feedback that we got from the production line in order to create a correlation and learn
06:28 that this kind of limitations were only affected by specific design elements. Collaboration is key. Engineering must hand off product related information to other departments that need that information. Configuration management enables an organization to collaborate around a product's parts with one data set for the product. How about cross discipline collaboration? How about with the electronics,
06:59 with the software, with simulations, with all of that? One essential capability we're working on is internally called cross disciplinary configuration management which is exactly what you're describing. So the capability to create baselines not only within one system, across disciplines, but also within different layers of a system of systems. And therefore there is a very close coupling between the idea of systems
07:31 engineering where you describe a system and its sub components, its functions and the composition that you're doing there with the idea of having this capability of cross disciplinary cross system configuration management. One of the standards that is essential to us is OSLC and especially the configuration management protocols within OSLC. So we want to stay on this.
08:03 I'm personally completely convinced that a PLM system has to deliver also, let's say, specific advantages to the business it is covering. This kind of support will be in the configuration of available tools. With Windchill in combination with ThingWorx, it is coming pretty close to what is the kind of target picture in terms of, let's say, connectivity and flexibility.
08:33 This idea of using, let's say restful APIs and having a layer that easily connects, having a handy platform with respect to low code programming where I can create my user interface and so on. Having the ability to collect and connect product data is absolutely key. This connectivity then extends to products, machines, and their sensors for a complete product definition.
09:04 How important is connected data in terms of your digital thread and holistic PLM program? Connected data and the so called AIoT cycle is kind of essential to us. And then again, a typical Bosch answer is that there is not one unique, let's say, approach how to do this, but this again varies with the different products and technologies and businesses.
09:34 Meanwhile, see a number of those examples where manufacturing or even the operation data goes immediately into the engineering process, especially with new products. One example is the solid oxide fuel cell for stationary use. We are just learning how the devices operate and perform out in the field and directly feeding this runtime information back into the development procedure on the one hand. Other examples are models that are,
10:06 let's say, known under predictive health or predictive maintenance where we are using, let's say, operational information from those products in order to determine either, let's say, the next service or the next maintenance or where we are putting this information back into the operating scheme. You know that with the special operation you drive the unit into a certain amount of stress.
10:37 You try to prevent these operational fields that induce a lot of stress into a specific component. Today's manufacturers make decisions that can have a great impact on the environment and people. Green engineering is the use of product development processes and solutions to design, develop, manufacture and service products in a way that promotes sustainability, minimizes pollution and reduces the risk to human health.
11:08 Bosch has been implementing green engineering in their processes. We are already CO2 neutral. We think that the digital twin representing a product and product instances can enable the, let's say, tracking of also the ingredients of a product. This information can be by the mean of the digital twin can then be used for example when the product has to be recycled. To be able to track and trace
11:38 what went into the product on the one hand. And then it is again closing the loop and see, okay, if I have, for example, recycling in mind, how do I change my way to design the product? How do I consider, for example, materials that go into the product with respect to not the performance within operation or the manufacturability, but also the ability to recycle. Back to digital thread.
12:09 Yeah, the same story we are supporting with the capabilities that we have from digitalization, we are supporting this as well. In practice, it is a kind of triangle. Beside all the activities that we are running in R & D, there are additional activities, a huge initiative in order to transform from SAP S three to S four, which also, let's say, kind of re-adjusts the IT architecture within the commercial area.
12:46 And on the other edge of the triangle, my colleagues from the manufacturing departments are running an initiative that's internally called BMLP, the Bosch Manufacturing and Logistics Platform, which is again a digitalization approach based on the same ideas and the same standards, but goes then into functionalities that are required for a very efficient production procedure. As Bosch has something like 250 plants.
13:17 Yes, all over the world. We were supplying them, but not only them, with this kind of IT technology, which contains elements in order to deliver data. What is the role of Cloud and SaaS and how do you see that in the future? Cloud is an enabler, especially for collaboration scenarios, especially cross enterprise, of course. So this is a driver. We are in a kind of hybrid scenario, but in practice we see a mix with the
13:52 increasing tendency towards those cloud based services. Olaf and the team at Bosch have taken a pragmatic approach to digital transformation with many value driven proof points. They have not only accelerated the pace of product development by sharing the right product information, but they've also created a model based enterprise connecting engineering, manufacturing, supply chain operations, and service teams through a holistic PLM program and the digital thread.
14:26 This enables Bosch to do even more efficiently while improving people's quality of life worldwide with smart connected and innovative products.