How the Government Uses Your Delivered Data

The effect of the evolution from drawing based to product data based technical data on the DoD supply chain.

The vast majority of technical data is transmitted between government and industry as drawings and associated lists. But this practice is beginning to change largely because the state of the practice to create and consume technical data is changing. For years, the level of dependence on a digital thread enabled model based environment has been quietly increasing. The model based environment, more specifically the concept of the model based definition, has recently become more visible due to the explosion of the use of additive manufacturing. Policy makers are beginning to realize that the availability of model based technical data is an absolute necessity to support advanced manufacturing technologies. But model based technical data is not limited to manufacturing. The scope of this technical data includes information that can be used to support configuration management, acquisition, provisioning, sustainment, operations, and the entire spectrum of lifecycle activities. The days of generating static documentation to communicate information across lifecycle phases within an enterprise is coming to an end. It makes sense that model based engineering technologies should be leveraged to the maximum extent possible to facilitate the exchange of information across enterprise boundaries. It not only makes sense but is a fundamental technology necessary to enable the vision presented in the recently released Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering Digital Engineering Strategy. The technology is an issue, the culture is the concern.