Getting PLM in Gear

Quebec aerospace manufacturer revamps engineering processes with ENOVIA SmarTeam

August 10, 2008

For more than 60 years, the aircraft industry has relied on Longueuil, Que.-based Héroux-Devtek Inc.’s landing gears, hydraulic actuators and flight critical components to get their planes on and off the ground. Because of this, the major aerospace OEMs and airlines count on them for flawless design, manufacturing and repair of these critical systems.

So whether Héroux-Devtek designs a landing gear assembly itself or manufactures one designed by an OEM customer, collaboration between engineering and manufacturing prior to its in-house machining, plating, finishing and assembly process is vital. While engineers must meet the operational and safety requirements of a system’s design, manufacturing must ensure it can be machined within quality and safety tolerances at a competitive price.

Senior project engineer Marc-André Pelletier says that, from the design outset, the company needed both teams to collaborate to ensure they met all objectives. But when manufacturing engineers had to travel to the engineering department’s offices to consult on a design, collaboration was limited by the manufacturing engineer’s availability.

To compound the problem, the company operates eight manufacturing facilities across North America, five in Canada alone. As a result, many issues had been identified after a finished design was released to manufacturing—a point at which it gets expensive to deal with changes.

“We knew if we could find a way to let engineering and manufacturing consult together every day, the manufacturing engineer would see more opportunities for improvement than if he were in our office only a few times,” said Nagi Homsy, Héroux-Devtek’s vice-president of engineering. “The more we can get manufacturing involved early in the process, the better the design is going to be, and that is always our primary concern.”

"Start with one new project before going back to legacy projects. Pace yourself, move at your own rhythm and improve your business process as you go."

--Héroux-Devtek engineer Marc-André Pelletier

To create a real-time collaborative environment, the company turned to Dassault Systèmes’ V5 PLM: CATIA and ENOVIA SmarTeam product lifecycle management and collaboration software. With SmarTeam, they can use SmartWeb to view 3D designs in development; this earlier identification of problems shortens design cycles while lowering costs. SmarTeam, moreover, facilitates requirements & compliance management, product configuration and program management—all necessary for the company to stay competitive in the worldwide market.

The implementation was done in conjunction with RAND North America, which offers training and support. RAND regional director of Eastern Canada, Dominique Lepore, said that the higher-ups at Héroux-Devtek were the ones insisting on getting SmarTeam in place, telling the engineers, “We are putting a process in place. You better use it.”

And use it they did—but not without typical growing pains. Pelletier says engineers had to learn a whole new set of work processes, including having to stop saving work locally on their machines’ C drives. “You have to save everything in SmarTeam,” he insists. “That is a different thing to do.”

This push toward collaboration was also accompanied by a push away from paper-based process and toward 3D model-based process. The integrated system has allowed them to hone designs more often than before. In the case of its landing gears, the company has, for example, gone from doing 10 to 15 load cases to 200.

Another major benefit of SmarTeam was the ability to go back in time to particular iterations as quickly as possible. Pelletier says it manages all of the data associated with every project and provides data vaulting for its CATIA V5 parts, assemblies and drafting; legacy Pro/E material; bills of material; analysis and simulation files; and technical documents such as engineering reports and specifications.

Previous iterations of CATIA V5 landing gear designs can be revisited with SmarTeam.

“You generate a lot of data and files, and it is difficult to manage,” he says, especially in the aviation industry, where engineering information must be accessible at the click of a button in case emergencies arise. “SmarTeam allows us to go back and find that in our electronic vault.”

As well, adopting CATIA—standard in the aerospace industry—has eased collaboration with outside partners. Héroux-Devtek can now take an OEM’s design and begin working on it immediately without translating data from one format to another. “I remember working with Pro/ENGINEER and Boeing,” Pelletier recalls. “It was hell. These file transfers are more efficient.” The company can also work more closely with OEMs earlier in the design stage, helping them identify changes that will improve design quality.

The initial implementation took place in 2003, and the process is on going, even today. Next, the company is looking to link SmarTeam with its Baan ERP system, develop a customer and supplier collaboration portal and launch a multi-site collaboration portal with video conferencing.

The key to a successful implementation, Pelletier says, is to start now and never let go. “Start with one new project before going back to legacy projects,” he says. “Pace yourself, move at your rhythm and improve your business process as you go.”
www.herouxdevtek.com
www.enovia.com