Providing the Best Solution Coverage in the Industry

In the Aerospace & Defense (A&D) industry where many projects experience cost overruns and schedule delays, good manufacturing planning and execution are critical to staying in business. Manufacturing planning and execution involves innumerable elements that must be precisely coordinated and executed to successfully launch a program on time and on budget. Interrelated activities throughout manufacturing facilities and the supply-chain must be carefully planned to achieve the safest, fastest, and most optimum sequence.

Dassault Systèmes (DS)' solution for Aerospace Manufacturing supports "Design-for-Manufacturing" approach in order that design and manufacturing processes can be optimized concurrently, in ways that best utilize available resources. From the early stages of product development, manufacturing planning, resource management and production operations can be defined in DS' PLM system to reduce the occurrence of manufacturing-delaying problems that often arise when products are ready to be built. Comprehensive 3D process and resource planning tools are provided for manufacturing organizations throughout the extended enterprise for creating and optimizing build-to-order, flexible manufacturing processes. By simulating resources such as robots, humans and manufacturing processes, manufacturers in the A&D industry can evaluate multiple production systems and process designs before investing in a single prototype. This approach promotes Design Anywhere/Build Anywhere (DABA) business agility, enabling production to be shifted easily among several plants to optimize capacity.

Since changes are inevitable in the real world, this solution offers functionalities to rapidly assess different alternatives to the production process and suggest ‘build-around’ strategy to quickly and efficiently revise the plan. Dassault Systèmes' PLM system maintains the relationships between design (“As Designed”), manufacturing planning (“As Planned”), and production (“As Built”) information. This helps aircraft manufacturers track late changes, identify parts that may be impacted by design changes and study the impact of the changes on production to optimize throughput and maintain product quality.

Dassault Systèmes' PLM system, with integrated design and manufacturing, gives aircraft manufacturers the information they need to predict the cost of changes in dollars and time. Manufacturing sequences can be rearranged independently from the design structure, providing full flexibility for individual sites to utilize custom production methods. Upon the completion of manufacturing planning, detailed work instructions are transferred to workers through the MES (Manufacturing Execution System) in the form of easy to follow instructions that include 3D assembly sequences to help minimize errors.