Development of a product using a process control plan digital twin

An apparatus for developing a product, the apparatus comprising:

• a memory configured to store computer-readable program code;
• and
• processing circuitry configured to access the memory, and execute the computer-readable program code to cause the apparatus to at least:
• generate a digital system model (DSM) of authoritative data that describes the product and a manufacturing process for producing the product, including machinery, materials, methods, facility and manpower used during the manufacturing process;
• generate digital twins (DTws) of a plurality of respective instances of a component of the manufacturing process from the DSM, the DTws including digital replicas of the instances of the component of the manufacturing process including one or more of the machinery, materials, methods, facility or manpower used during the manufacturing process, wherein the component of the manufacturing process includes a control plan that identifies process characteristics and control methods for sources of variation to which the process characteristics are subject;
• receive attribute data measured as multiple runs of the manufacturing process are performed to produce multiples of the product, the attribute data for attributes of the process characteristics identified by the control plan that are subject to the sources of variation of one or more of the machinery, materials, methods, facility or manpower that cause variation in product characteristics;
• execute the digital replicas with input of the attribute data, and thereby update the DTws to replicate the respective instances of the component of the manufacturing process as performed, wherein updating the DTws comprises updating the plurality of respective instances of the control plan using the attribute data for the attributes of the process characteristics identified by the control plan;
• perform a data analysis of the manufacturing process based on the DTws as updated by at least extracting a correlation of measurements of a plurality of manufacturing variables and quality metrics, wherein the manufacturing variables comprise environmental control data and machine attributes, and wherein the quality metrics comprise quality classifications of manufactured products;
• and
• modify the product or the manufacturing process based on the data analysis to reduce variability in one or more of the product characteristics by at least encoding the correlation to generate a machine control dataset and feeding the machine control dataset to a machine that performs the manufacturing process.