Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) for Aircraft Sustainment and Support
NCMS Project #: 140482
Problem: In the current depot environment, engineering and production information are often insufficiently managed, and do not always incorporate knowledge of the true state of manufacturing or repair requirements. This state provides faulty baselines based on infeasible plans and, therefore, schedules, and provides skewed estimates of the resource requirements necessary to complete a given workload.
Benefit:
- Communication and collaboration of engineering and planning effort between all project stakeholders.
- Consistent engineering and production process work flow that will make compliance to requirements easier and will ensure critical steps will not be overlooked.
- A complete integrated set of engineering data including procedures, drawings, reports, and lessons learned that can serve as a model for future aircraft repairs. These knowledge libraries allow best practices and lessons learned to be shared and re-used.
- Industry products and services adapted more closely matching unique requirements of DoD.
Solution/Approach: This CTMA project will support NAVAIR’s configuration management of 3D design models for all modern aircraft and to leverage design re-use capabilities to reduce costs. With a Digital/Virtual Depot one can reduce cycle-times by using proven re-usable processes for all maintenance and repair, along with simulating those work-flow activities to optimize through-put. This would include resource models of shop layouts, equipment, and capabilities of all Fleet Readiness Center (FRC) facilities.
Impact on Warfighter:
- Reduced cycle time for complex manufacturing process.
- Significant cost savings.
- More effective allocation of resources.
- Improved change and management processes.
DOD Participation:
- U.S. Navy (FRC Southwest)
Industry Participation:
- Siemens PLM
- Spatial Integrated Systems (SIS)
- NCMS