"Digital Data Package" (DDP)

Scope & Objective (Basic Concept)

Successful products today are the result of the interplay between mechanical, electrical/electronic, and software disciplines. An increasing amount of development and manufacturing is done in partnerships between companies. For a digital thread to serve as the basis for digital twins and AI applications, it is no longer sufficient to enrich the individual submodels with metadata and combine them in common structures. Instead, individual content such as requirements, functions, effective geometries, tolerances, work processes, inspection characteristics and results must be made accessible for communication and collaboration by people and IT systems across companies and IT systems.

These are the issues addressed by the DDP (Digital Data Package) prostep ivip / VDA working group: This group focuses on developing and maintaining an interconnected data exchange package to support model-driven, collaborative product and system development.

Focus Areas & Concrete Results 2024

This year, vendors in the project group have further developed their prototypes for creating and processing DDPs in order to test the results of their work with concrete examples from product development. The data model has been extended to include additional attributes, for example to support the MoSSEC standard or to address the validation and verification (V&V) domain. The recommendation published last year has also been expanded and an updated version will be published by the end of the year.

This year's important results include:

• Coordination and alignment with the CDT working group: a close collaboration with the CDT working group has been established to exploit synergies and pursue common goals, e.g. joint coordination of an ontology.
• Workshop at the prostep ivip symposium: results and progress were presented and discussed in a well-attended workshop at the prostep ivip symposium. Progress at the interface between MBSE and mechanics was discussed, as well as the use of existing and emerging processes and technologies to provide engineering data for digital twins and AI, e.g. CATENA-X, GAIA-X, etc.
• Evaluation of parallel approaches: Results from the evaluation of parallel approaches such as AASX and EasySTEP were analyzed and discussed.

Organizational / Technical Challenges in 2024

Contrary to other association projects, there is just one project group for the DDP, in which user companies and vendors work together in an agile way. This requires a high level of mutual trust and commitment from both sides. The participants organize a monthly sprint review and track their tasks with JIRA. One challenge for the project group is to persuade the market-dominating PLM vendors to work together to accelerate the transfer of project results into industrial practice.

What is planned in 2025

• Supporting the CASCaDE project with standardization
• Application of the CASCaDE standard in the implementation of the DDP
•  Improve interdepartmental collaboration and coordination with other project groups: Increased interaction and coordination with other project groups such as CDT, JT, LOTAR, etc.
• Expand use cases with regard to sustainability, inspection and DDP for MBD (model-based definition)
• Erstellung von Best Practices:
  • DDP for AASX: Use of neutral format mappings to create AASX with deep links to mechanics and geometry
  • DDP for Joining: Use of DDPs for digital machine-readable repositories of joining information, including geometric and technological information, joining conditions, part materials, standard parts, versioning and annotations.
  • Documentation and dissemination: Extended demos and videos showing DDP use cases and user journeys
  • DDP for sustainability: Digital data packages as a means of transport for sustainability data
• These measures are intended to create and further develop the conditions for a broad industrial application of the DDP.

 

What the project coordinator says:

„The DDP project group achieved all of its goals in 2024 and produced excellent results. As previously announced, the working group has also initiated a standardization within the Object Management Group (OMG) under the name CASCaDE. It has already made very good progress and continues to move forward as planned. I would like to thank our members for their great commitment, especially our Technical Project Manager Michael Kirsch"."The DDP project group again met all the goals it set for itself in 2023 and achieved outstanding results. The working group is also pursuing standardization, which poses a major challenge  in terms of organization and content. I would like to thank our members for their exceptional commitment, especially our Technical Project Manager Michael Kirsch."

What the project management says:

„The newly launched CASCaDE activities demonstrate the need for a standardized data exchange package and the commitment within our Group.  We see this commitment as key to the success of our project and hope that the spirit within our group remains as excellent as it is today. All interested parties should be able to gain practical experience with the DDP. In the coming year, we intend to support user companies and vendors on their way to industrialization and to continue our close collaboration with partner working groups".