New PLM architecture for an aircraft manufacturer
In response to market expectations, product lifecycle management must be reconsidered. The mission consisted in defining new configuration management concepts and their compatibility with related trades for new aircraft programs.
“With the help of Mews Partners we reached a level of understanding and convergence between our business concepts and the built-in ones of the editor’s solution.”
Kontext
As part of the redesign of the PLM, a new integrated solution is being considered. This solution is under study for a new aircraft program, but also for two existing programs.
It has a huge impact on business processes, methods and data models throughout the product lifecycle. As a cross-cutting discipline, configuration management is at the heart of the transformation. The validation of the principles of configuration appears to be a necessary condition for the migration to the new PLM.
Approach
To involve all the stakeholders, an Agile at scale approach is being implemented. All the business and IT teams are represented and brought together on board.
The approach involves all business lines (design office, preparation, manufacturing and after-sales), all subsystems, as well as the entire chain of command (prime contractor and suppliers).
To address specifically the broad scope of the configuration management, “lightening raid” workshops are set up with the support of the publisher to align the stakeholders with the concepts and principles to be applied.
Results
The study phase made it possible to investigate the field of possible configuration management. Two models were developed: the one for the custom product and that of the modular component. Beyond the detailed description and the validation of the concepts for each type of products, the major challenge was to make the two models coexist within the final product.
The implementation phase highlighted the limits of the editor solution with respect to the user needs or business habits.
The mission made it possible to shake up the historical principles of configuration management, to align the players on a global vision and to deduce the fundamental building blocks of tomorrow’s configuration management.
