PLM leaps the barriers of complexity

ITC Infotech's vice-president of PLM & Engineering Services, Deepankar Ghosh (pictured top) and president of European Operations, Hardeep Singh Garewal discuss the holistic method to addressing a complex set of problems. Supply chain design is a particularly challenging job in the aerospace industry. Gone are the days when most aircraft manufacturing was a concern only for the aerospace companies and multinational OEMs and tier 1 suppliers.

As the environment gets trickier and more demanding with layers of complexity, zero failure tolerance, long service life, stringent compliance and regulatory mandates, there are more factors that need consideration than a basic supply chain system. A primary factor here is that production volume in this space is relatively smaller than in other manufacturing industries, like automotive or electronics. Additionally, there is a high risk factor involved, considering the long lead-time of almost 10 years for the development cycle for an aircraft. Finally, all of this amounts to a high performance expectation that does not leave time for taking chances with standard parts. Typically the supply chain in aerospace gets into levels of multi-dimensional connections based on geographies, time, information and risk.

This complexity adds to the challenge of managing change. Any change to the design at any level impacts the entire manufacturing process that cannot be kept privy from stakeholders. Sharing of information and collaboration is of paramount importance while maintaining consistency and tandem.

Additionally, the long development cycle across the supply chain translates into a highly complex and challenging programme management. While manufacturing processes are diversely distributed, central programme management is usually controlled by the parent aerospace company; as otherwise, it could collapse at any stage of the development. The project management team, therefore, has to undergo a nightmare of maintaining quality, cost, timelines and handling inefficiencies. 

Design and deployment

In terms of design, the length of the cycle and need for high performance means every design has to be validated for its manufacturability. Product designing in aerospace has moved really fast on the technology curve since 1960s, when the first CAD programs had emerged. This opens avenues into new revenue streams as was the case with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner programme. The radical design of this product saw an exemplary optimal deployment of PLM technology and the integration of the manufacturing process with design from scratch. Integration of the supply chain into the design process from a very early stage is essential for maximum optimisation of the manufacturing process with design consistency, minimised risks and reduced costs.

Another aspect of the product lifecycle in aerospace is the need to manage service related information for a significantly long period. Aircraft have long service lifetimes of up to three decades. This implies a need to manage the history of both category and individual aircrafts, including all documentation, service level agreements, maintenance contracts, service catalogues and so on. This is a huge amount of data handling, both in terms of size and duration.

PLM systems have helped manufacturers in streamlining processes and developing and delivering market-ready, cutting-edge products since their inception in 1985. PLM helps integrate all the stakeholders on a single platform. With this technology, manufacturers can gain early visibility into design and provide their inputs based on the manufacturability of the production much early on in the development cycle. The manufacturing process gets designed along with the aircraft's engineering design. There are various simulation tools available to enable aerospace companies along with their suppliers to digitally analyse the entire manufacturing process and accommodate appropriate changes in the product accordingly.

An integrated PLM system cuts through the constraints and generates collaboration over effective, digital tools with higher throughput delivering consistency in decisions and implementations. The arrival of the digital age has made available such advanced tools that can cut down overall development time and unlock huge cost savings by avoiding multiple sequential iterations, in a case where any design change could have a significantly large impact. Speaking of digital, while it is not a new concept in the industry, there are now even deeper levels of percolation into product design, development, operations, supply chain, procurement, engineering, services, and of course marketing. The entire eco-system of an aerospace business is now thinking on lines of digitisation. PLM technologies and capabilities are evolving and are fundamentally changing the business approach in the industry.

A pivotal role

Today, with an industry estimate of around 33,000 new aircraft to be delivered to the market over the next 20 years, PLM - and innovation in PLM - assumes greater relevance than ever before. Major companies have consistently shown a late-to-market trend with delays of up to three years or longer, resulting huge monetary losses running in billions, in sales and in credibility. PLM can play a pivotal role in helping them address demands by increasing speed to market, while efficiently delivering highest standards of quality. With a system that holistically integrates the end-to-end lifecycle of a product, there is a lot of bandwidth freed up to increase overall company productivity and identify opportunities for new revenue streams.

The adoption of PLM into the aerospace ecosystem calls for significant investments in the PLM space to develop advanced capabilities and technologies that address the industry issues with innovation and scale as per changing industry scenarios. Apart from leading products, PLM service providers also need to evolve and invest sufficiently in ensuring that the niche requirement of this industry is understood not only at a transactional, but also at a strategic level. With digitisation there is a massive window of benefit that has now reached the business strategy level. It is no longer an engineering benefactor, but an instrument of growth even at a larger directional level.

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