Ensuring Program Success at the Earliest Stages

Companies that embrace this approach by using 3D experiences will enhance their reputation as best in class manufacturers.

As budgets are being scrutinized and many programs are failing to meet functional, cost, and schedule objectives, the need for improved program execution is more essential than it has ever been. In order to deliver a program on time and on budget, OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers need to take into account that their success (or failure) can be determined by decisions made very early in the process – many times even before the proposal is delivered.

In fact, decisions that are made before program launch affect 70% to 75% of program life cycle costs, according to testimony given to the United States Senate’s Committee on Armed Services in 2009 by Dr. Paul G. Kaminski, chair, Committee on Pre-Milestone A Systems Engineering, Air Force Studies Board, National Research Council.

Driven by a highly competitive landscape, aerospace manufacturers are promising too much in their proposals without a solid enough assurance that they will be able to meet their commitments. This helps them win a bid, but the plans they put forth may be unrealistic. The serious work of finding a way to meet a proposal after it has been accepted is a major contributor to budget and schedule overruns.

This conundrum is no secret in the industry. Roland Berger, a top strategy consultant in the European Aerospace & Defense sector, annually surveys 200 C-level executives about their top management issues and last year, 41% of respondents cited aggressive initial commitments (performance, costs, time) as their top challenge. The next most frequent answer was race against competition (e.g. on time-to-market), which 19% of respondents cited.

The challenge is, no one can afford to make less aggressive proposals without losing contracts to the competition and putting their business at risk. The only solution is finding a way to confidently make aggressive commitments during the proposal phase that are believable, deliverable, and, ultimately, profitable.

Introducing more system modeling, simulation, optimization, and alternatives earlier in the process is the answer. It can provide critical insight into many of the issues that cause delays or overruns. Program performance could be significantly improved with exponential improvements in the level of engineering detail and shared knowledge available in the proposal phase. Conventional thinking would suggest that making proposals that are aggressive and appealing to a customer, and provide both parties with the confidence that the proposal could be met, would require a cost prohibitive investment. However, a look at manufacturers and suppliers outside the aerospace industry proves that this is a false assumption.

Including a lifelike 3D experience with your proposal – from online 3D product views to fully immersive virtual reality simulations – will give your customers a reason to believe.

Industries such as automotive, that do not have launch customers or revenue guarantees to back up their investment, have to execute their plans closely. Through experience they have found the best approach is to leverage best practices from existing programs and then model and simulate their way to success. Automotive companies put more effort into simulating the product lifecycle during the proposal phase, enabling them to provide more realistic estimations on timelines, costs, and overall performance. They study a product’s behavior in a customer setting – both to know better for themselves how it will perform, and to give prospective customers a high-fidelity understanding of the final product’s look, feel, and function. They also model and simulate manufacturing to such a degree that production lines are turned on for the first time at rate, without the slow and costly learning curves of typical aerospace production.

If all the learning is done in the digital world, costs can be amortized with higher production rates. Successful manufacturers, such as those in the automotive industry, use savings realized from navigating a digital learning curve to spend more on hard tooling and automation, enabling them to reduce variability. Both of these investments are much less expensive to develop and produce with modern product and manufacturing software. Adding to the return on investment, data developed during the proposal is reused and refined after launch reducing the non-recurring detail development cost.

Decisions that are made before a program launch affect 70% to 75% of program lifecycle costs, according to testimoney given to the United States Senate's Committee on Armed Services in 2009.

These methods are commonly challenged in the aerospace industry with the argument that sectors like automotive have much higher production rates, making the investment more feasible and cost effective. However, these critics are not evaluating the full picture and should know that industries such as commercial shipbuilding and oil platform construction also use this approach quite successfully. What is stopping aerospace manufacturers from adopting these practices and closing the gap between promise and delivery?

It will not be easy to change practices that have been in place for so long, but rising expectations and budget scrutiny is making it a necessity. Traditional ways of working will have to be abandoned and replaced with approaches that take advantage of the latest software capabilities. Changes like this will not happen overnight, but here is a technical roadmap outlining a few places to begin:

Improve communication with a single program home for all participants
• Real time visibility and monitoring across the extended enterprise will improve information quality with all program documents and help with change and access controls. Say goodbye to the ongoing hunt for current data in favor of a solution that provides live, automatic, and interactive decision support.

Implement a top-down approach to define extremely complex systems
• Using a common design language/approach for all disciplines across an organization will provide flexibility to explore a greater number of configuration alternatives and different technologies. It will also make it easier to understand full requirements and traceability.

Optimize production with manufacturing trade studies
• Applying scientific analysis to define a production approach will increase confidence in the accuracy of forecasted manufacturing costs and rate. Current production experience can be used to develop future production plans and an optimal plan can be defined within current production system constraints.

Extend 3D digital mock-up (DMU) to a multi-discipline systems mock-up
• Giving all disciplines, including electrical, mechanical, and fluidic engineers access to a functional DMU allows for examination of a full range of detailed design alternatives. Doing so will help find the optimal solution quickly – having explored a number of alternatives in the process – while capturing and reusing the full analysis history.

Provide a reason to believe with high-fidelity simulation
• Demonstrate your ability to deliver on a proposal and leave no questions unanswered by: deriving alternative designs from system models and presenting them in lifelike ways; showing the complete system in simulated operation; demonstrating the system performance tradeoffs and optimization; showing the basis of production estimate in exhaustive manufacturing simulations; and providing estimates based on deep modeling, analysis, and simulation results.

These investments improve competitiveness. Companies that successfully implement the right technology will confidently deliver more exciting, winning proposals on time and on profit. In the end, the formula for success is straightforward: aggressive proposals at a competitive price from teams that earn the trust of their customers will ultimately win. Companies that embrace this approach by using 3D experiences will enhance their reputation as best-in-class manufacturers who deliver innovative products on time and within budget.
 

Dassault Systèmes
Waltham, MA
3ds.com