Bob Klem has seen a lot change in the 30 years he has been with General Motors. But one of the most significant events in the manufacturer's operational history is happening right now. The company, he says, is in the midst of a global transformation that emphasizes a new kind of vehicle. This vehicle is not a new automobile; rather, it is a change agent — a driving force, so to speak — that will move the 100-year-old company into its next century.

For the past 10 years, Klem, GM's Information System and Services global director for manufacturing engineering, has been working with his European counterpart, Richard Woodhead, on developing digital toolkits that will alter the way GM manufactures its cars and trucks. The toolkits define the workflows and sequencing standards for building each of GM's products. For example, there are about 4,000 weld points on an automobile, each varying in size, the type of weld gun required, and the duration of the weld based on stress analysis. A digital model, residing in a global component library, standardizes the way welds are made and how parts go together, regardless of where in the world a part is built.

The toolkits, which Klem develops and Woodhead fine-tunes for each site around the globe, represent a virtual model of engineering designs, manufacturing assets, and validation methods. "Once you have all of these three segments aligned, you get a high degree of reuse of the digital data, so you are not constantly reprocessing the plant," Klem says.

The digital designs eliminate rework and program delays, and reduce the overall capital investment. But this effort represents so much more than just cost cutting and efficiency gains.

"It's our biggest lever to get to what could be a short-term competitive advantage in digital manufacturing," says Woodhead, director of manufacturing engineering, Information Systems and Services, for GM Europe.

Digital manufacturing, also referred to as "the digital factory," has been loosely defined as the digitization of the design-to-manufacture processes. It is the ability to integrate CAD, product lifecycle management (PLM) tools, simulation software, analytical applications, and, in the very near future, control technologies. Together, these technologies create a virtual world in which a product can be built and validated prior to commissioning any of the equipment used to build it or producing physical prototypes. But the concept can be hard to grasp. Just think of it in terms of "Second Life" — the popular 3D virtual business world where companies like IBM and Reuters do business online — except that in the simulated digital factory, it's all about pushing a digital prototype onto the virtual factory floor.

Many organizations already have the technology they need to create a digital manufacturing environment, but they've yet to discover the big-picture potential of integrating it all. "There are people out there that understand the isolated areas of process simulation for the flow of a chemical plant on the process side or to simulate the layout of the factory on the discrete side, but they don't understand how it all comes together in a truly integrated digital product model," says Dick Slansky, an analyst with ARC Advisory Group.

In fact, one of the biggest inhibitors of the digital manufacturing concept is a lack of awareness or understanding of what these advanced technology tools working together can do, Slansky says. In addition, fear and unease are often associated with the unexplored territory of digital manufacturing.

Other inhibitors that Slansky and others cite include cost, the inherent learning curve, the potential for cultural clashes between departments, a lack of standards, and even unreliable telecommunications infrastructures that limit the ability to share data globally. Collectively, these issues may delay the adoption of digital technology, but they won't stop the inevitable digital revolution in manufacturing, supporters say.

Case in point: GM. The company has encountered all of these issues in one form or another over the past decade, but the benefits of digital manufacturing ultimately outweigh the risks. "It absolutely changed our world," GM's Klem says. "Just like the Internet, it has changed the way we do business."