Siemens continues to work with and support the U.S. Department of Defense following a 2019 indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) $25 million contract by which the company committed to license, maintain and support the U.S. Armed Forces branch. For more on the current evolution of the deal, read here. The question here, is what does this mean for the U.S. Air Force?
Siemens Government Technologies (SGT) is an exclusively dedicated division of Siemens that secures and modernizes the U.S. Federal Government, as well as other defense agencies worldwide, through the integration of their innovative products, technologies, software and services. The USAF has selected Siemen’s Teamcenter single solution platform to accelerate its wide aerospace and defense digitalization process and support its product lifecycle management (PLM) that aims to overcome many of the current challenges these industries face, such as fierce competition, increased regulatory requirements and complex programs implementation.
As a tool within the Xcelerator portfolio from Siemens Digital Industries, Teamcenter is a modern, open and adaptable PLM platform. “By providing the Air Force and other defense agencies with a robust enterprise PLM solution, time-sensitive and actionable data can be accessed across the earliest phases of a system lifecycle, resulting in lower operational costs, fewer downtimes, and overall improved readiness,” said Tina Dolph, president and CEO of SGT.
By standardizing on Siemens, the U.S. Air Force leverages Teamcenter while taking advantage of both the digital twin and digital thread strategies in manufacturing. To advance in their digital transformation across the aerospace ecosystem, the USAF makes use of new technologies and embraces a comprehensive digital twin prototyping approach at the early phases in the manufacturing process to better predict product performance and production processes before the actual physical production begins. In Siemens, this is known as the “fly before you build” approach. Additionally, this approach limits program testing risks, improves test programs’ effectiveness and allows users to center on those testing areas that need to be critically addressed.
However, the full potential of the digital twin cannot be realized without connecting or integrating it to all the product lifecycle development stages. The digital thread allows multi-domains integration by a powerful and continuous data exchange across an enterprise. While the data remain secure and available for the different area users, the collaborative environment of the digital thread favors productivity and innovation through task automation and digitalization. According to an email to Defense One Capt. Jake Bailey, an Air Force spokesman, the U.S. Air Force chose Teamcenter "to provide consistency in the way our models and all associated data, software, and functional support integrate and interoperate to produce a digital thread throughout the system lifecycle.”
Siemens’ increasingly innovational PLM software suite continues to prove that their digital capabilities are at the U.S. Federal Government service to support their aerospace and defense agencies on their new products and systems manufacturability through a holistic digital enterprise transformation.
To see how this story affects Siemens, read: U.S. Air Force Standardizes on Siemens Teamcenter in $25 Million PLM Contract with Huge Growth Potential.