Value Chain: From iDMU to Shopfloor Documentation of Aeronautical Assemblies

Competition in the aerospace manufacturing companies has led them to continuously improve the efficiency of their processes from the conceptual phase to the start of production and during operation phase, providing services to clients. PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is an end-to-end business solution which aims to provide an environment of information about the product and related processes available to the whole enterprise throughout the product’s lifecycle. Airbus designs and industrializes aircrafts using Concurrent Engineering methods since decades. The introduction of new PLM methods, procedures and tools, and the need to improve processes efficiency and reduce time-to-market, led Airbus to pursue the Collaborative Engineering method. Processes efficiency is also impacted by the variety of systems existing within Airbus. Interoperability rises as a solution to eliminate inefficiencies due to information exchange and transformations and it also provides a way to discover and reuse existing information. The ARIADNE project (Value chain: from iDMU to shopfloor documentation of aeronautical assemblies) was launched to support the industrialization process of an aerostructure by implementing the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU) concept in a Collaborative Engineering framework. Interoperability becomes an important research workpackage in ARIADNE to exploit and reuse the information contained in the iDMU and to create the shop floor documentation. This paper presents the context, the conceptual approach, the methodology adopted and preliminary results of the project

Mapping customer needs to engineering characteristics: an aerospace perspective for conceptual design

Designing complex engineering systems, such as an aircraft or an aero-engine, is immensely challenging. Formal Systems Engineering (SE) practices are widely used in the aerospace industry throughout the overall design process to minimise the overall design effort, corrective re-work, and ultimately overall development and manufacturing costs. Incorporating the needs and requirements from customers and other stakeholders into the conceptual and early design process is vital for the success and viability of any development programme. This paper presents a formal methodology, the Value-Driven Design (VDD) methodology that has been developed for collaborative and iterative use in the Extended Enterprise (EE) within the aerospace industry, and that has been applied using the Concept Design Analysis (CODA) method to map captured Customer Needs (CNs) into Engineering Characteristics (ECs) and to model an overall ‘design merit’ metric to be used in design assessments, sensitivity analyses, and engineering design optimisation studies. Two different case studies with increasing complexity are presented to elucidate the application areas of the CODA method in the context of the VDD methodology for the EE within the aerospace secto

Collaborative Engineering: An Airbus Case Study

AbstractThis document introduces the main concepts of Collaborative Engineering as a new methodology, procedures and tools to design and develop an aircraft, as Airbus Military is implementing.Airbus designs and industrializes aircrafts under Concurrent Engineering techniques since decades with success. The introduction of new PLM methodologies, procedures and tools, mainly in the industrialization areas, and the need to reduce time-to-market conducted Airbus Military to push the engineering teams to do things in a different way.Traditional Engineering works sequentially, Concurrent Engineering basically overlaps tasks between teams using maturity states and taking assuming risks. Collaborative Engineering promotes a single team to develop product, processes and resources from the conceptual phase to the start of the serial production. The deliverable of the team is an iDMU (industrial DMU), a complete definition and verification of the virtual manufacturing of the product

Set-based approach to passenger aircraft family design

Presented is a method for the design of passenger aircraft families. Existing point-based methods found in the literature employ sequential approaches in which a single design solution is selected early and is then iteratively modified until all requirements are satisfied. The challenge with such approaches is that the design is driven toward a solution that, although promising to the optimizer, may be infeasible due to factors not considered by the models. The proposed method generates multiple solutions at the outset. Then, the infeasible solutions are discarded gradually through constraint satisfaction and set intersection. The method has been evaluated through a notional example of a three-member aircraft family design. The conclusion is that point-based design is still seen as preferable for incremental (conventional) designs based on a wealth of validated empirical methods, whereas the proposed approach, although resource-intensive, is seen as more suited to innovative designs

Modelling for data management & exchange in Concurrent Engineering - A case study of civil aircraft assembly line

This research aims to improve the dataflow performance of the Concurrent Engineering (CE) practice in the detail design stage of the aircraft Assembly Line (AL) in the C919 aircraft project. As the final integrator of the aircraft, Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Company Ltd. (SAMC) is responsible for developing the AL with global suppliers. Although CE has been implemented in AL projects to shorten lead time, reduce development cost and improve design quality, the lack of experience and insufficient infrastructure may lead to many challenges in cooperation with distributed suppliers, especially regarding data management/exchange and workflow control. In this research, the particular CE environment and activities in SAMC AL projects were investigated. By assessing the CE performance and benchmarking, the improvement opportunities are identified, and then an activity-oriented workflow and dataflow model is established by decomposing the work process to detail levels. Based on this model, a Product Data Management (PDM) based support platform is proposed to facilitate data management/exchange in dynamic workflow to improve work efficiency and interoperability. This solution is mocked-up on the Siemens Teamcenter 8.1 PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) software and its feasibility is checked. The mock-up is evaluated by SAMC experts and suppliers. The feedback shows the acceptance of the model by experts and the urgency of improving data/work flow design before PLM implementing. The result of this research is useful for enterprises in similar environments transiting from pre-PLM to implementing PLM and who wanting to strengthen CE in the new product development

Vertical sub-contracting relationships strategy, the Airbus First-tier suppliers\' coordination

This paper analyzes the transformations of industrial vertical relationships, and more particularly the duality of the coordination modes within new industrial architectures. The paper aims to characterize relationship between the architect and the first-tier suppliers according to the strategic degree of their competence. Two models of coordination arm\'s length and systems integration coexist within the same industrial architecture. The recourse to one or the other varies according to the policy of purchase and the strategic degree of the sub-contracted subsystems. Thus we will analyze the system of subcontracting of Airbus by focusing to the importance of the purchasing policy. The argumentation articulates in two parts. The first one considers the vertical subcontracting relationships in the framework of complex productions, by insisting on organizational aspects. The second one analyses the transformation of the \"Airbus\" productive system by focusing on purchasing process and the emergence of new First-tier supplier’s coordination modes.NAModularity – Systems Integration – Strategic competences – Purchasing Strategy – First Tier Suppliers – Airbus

Formal Knowledge Examination Institutions: Chance Or Threat to European Medium Tech-Nology SMEs? A Cognitive and Institutional Perspective

For most SME in incumbent medium-technology sectors, international business is only possi-ble, if additional support by specified institutions is provided. These additional services in-clude information on foreign markets – regulation, market partners, sales potential – as well as coordination – for trade fairs, common international recruitment and qualification strategies – and capabilities like access to financial markets or international public funding for interna-tionalisation or cutting-edge technological knowledge. For many of these services, private provision is possible, as exclusive use and rivalry in consumption are given. For other ser-vices, however, network characteristics restrict a completely private provision. The proposed paper analyses institutional arrangements particularly designed on regional, national or European level to support linkages between organisations and networks in differ-ent European regions. The investigation is based on information collected within the frame-work of the “IKINET project – International Knowledge and Innovation Network†(EU FP6, N° CIT2-CT-2004-506242). The specific challenge of the institutions investigated within this paper refers to linkages between organisations and networks with different institutional de-signs, e.g. the role of public and/or private supply, the characteristics and subjects of services, organisational structures and modes of coordination. These institutions attempt to bridge the gap between SME and organisations in different regions, but also to ease the access to EU funding for transnational (transregional) cooperation between SME. The paper will analyse their products, organisational structure, funding and codes of interaction. This investigation will be used to identify general and regionally specific prerequisites for effective interregional boundary spanning institutions. Secondly, the connectivity between the institutions will be analysed to reveal necessary standards or institutional arrangements to secure interregional trust in cooperation. These standards can range from rather informal, for example on the basis of business norms in trade fairs, to completely formal arrangements, for example in the case of contractual agreements on intellectual property rights and licenses. The assessment of these institutional arrangements uses an integrative methodological framework based on institu-tional analysis to overcome information asymmetries in cooperative innovative processes, sociological and cognitive psychological models of organisational and cognitive proximity and management models for SME as learning organisations. As a result, insights are expected for the European Union, which institutional arrangements are necessary for technology plat-forms on a regional level to secure interregional knowledge interactions.