Digitalization – The smart path to supplier development and program success: Dassault Systemes
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) today continue to shift the development and manufacturing of specific components to their suppliers. This change is necessary to meet the growing demand for thousands of next-generation aircraft in the coming decades. With the change, aerospace suppliers have more control but also share responsibility with their OEM customers for program success.
Every supplier—regardless of its size—plays a critical role in a program’s success. Supplier development programs generate new capabilities or competencies to support performance improvements. Digitalization offers suppliers the ability to streamline processes, align with OEM customers, and improve performance and responsiveness. How will suppliers meet the challenge?
Optimize collaboration, minimize issues
Better collaboration between suppliers and their OEM customer(s) minimizes issues and increases performance. To implement improved collaboration, suppliers must first resolve two primary hurdles:
- Secure valuable data and competitive cost models
- Optimize data management
By digitalizing product development, suppliers will have the ability to eliminate poor data management practices and secure sensitive data. Shifting to a digital product model on a product innovation platform significantly improves collaboration across the enterprise. By leveraging one definition of engineering parts and bill of material (BOM), multiple design disciplines can publish data into a consolidated engineering BOM. Using one common change process provides visibility for all stakeholders, standardization of change management, and more. This results in fewer BOM errors, less rework, and more time for innovation.
Accelerate development with simulation
Multi-physics simulation and high-performance computing (HPC) offer the ability to explore and optimize the real-world behavior of products. For aerospace suppliers, simulation accelerates the process of evaluating the performance, reliability, and safety of materials and products before committing to physical prototypes.
Leveraging simulation early in the design phase can accelerate development time, lower the cost of physical testing, and lessen the risks in meeting certification requirements.
Suppliers using the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform on the cloud can provide engineers access to multi-physics simulation and HPC simulation for a few days.
Drive manufacturing excellence with visual process planning
Digital continuity in manufacturing provides a shared digital landscape connecting all stakeholders to improve visibility into, control over, and synchronization across manufacturing operations and supply chain processes on a global scale. A critical aspect of every digitalization strategy is the move to using a virtual build in planning. A virtual build allows suppliers to replace high-cost physical mock-ups with virtual prototyping. Besides delivering a substantial saving in prototyping costs, this eliminates wait times that prolong the product cycle. Engineering changes take place rapidly in a “virtual space” instead of a physical prototype. Very flexible and easily duplicated and modified, virtual models serve multiple use cases.
Suppliers take process planning to the next level by equipping their manufacturing planners with the right visual process planning tools. Visual process planning supports supplier development objectives to increase productivity, reduce overall costs, improve product quality, and accelerate time-to-market.
This content was originally published on the Dassault Systemes website.
