Aircraft have very long life cycles and are typically candidates for modifications or changes based on evolving business needs and customer requirements over its operational life. Modification of an aircraft or reconfiguration, while expensive, can give a new lease on life for an old aircraft and add to the bottom line of the operator.

As a result, the aircraft modification business has been growing rapidly during the last few years. Modifications may be carried out for various reasons whether to comply with regulations, to incorporate operational improvements, to increase reliability, or even for refurbishing and completion.

Aircraft modification may involve the following: design, modification and installation. Key to performing these tasks effectively is to have a product life cycle management software environment that is flexible, dynamic, and one that lets the mod centres collaborate effectively with the customers and suppliers for designing, modifying and installing agreed modifications. Lack of sufficient information and collaboration in this area causes significant delays and cost escalations during the modification and completion of the aircraft.

Challenge

Modification centres face an arduous task of bidding for the job without having complete information on aircraft configuration, parts data etc. Also, aircraft modification typically involves a lot of uncertainties that cannot be ascertained until the aircraft is disassembled. Some challenges that mod centres face:

* Nondeterministic process.

* Original drawings and tooling are very rarely available.

* Aircraft configuration information is almost unavailable.

* Bidding and cost estimation of the modification task is very time-consuming without proper information.

Solution

The Collaborative Aircraft Modification and Design Change solution provides a common platform and a collaborative environment for easy repetition of mod activities and re-use of knowledge unifying the mod centres with the OEM, customers and suppliers. One solution is the use of ENOVIA portal as the entry point and various ENOVIA collaborative workplace tools for web-based work management and shared 3D visualisation. Customers, OEMs and suppliers can collaborate in realtime with the mod centre concerning change of design, modification or reconfiguration of the aircraft using issue management tools and 3D sharing tools, on top of the PLM and visualisation tools provided by ENOVIA.

Benefits

* Reduced bidding and cost estimation time for higher profitability and faster turnaround times to the customer.

* Accurate cost estimation to avoid overruns.

* Close integration of product design with customer requirements for higher customer satisfaction and contract stipulation adherence.

* Higher profitability through increased aircraft life.

* Faster implementation of aircraft modifications at a cheaper cost.

The end result is a collaborative environment providing realtime access to product 3D data, configuration data, extended enterprise visualisation of federated data ensuring successful optimisation of aircraft modification and design change business processes.

Maxtec Global Support Services

011 803 6635