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software such as Enovia, companies like Boeing can hand off responsibility for designing
parts or components to those partners who will ultimately be responsible for their
manufacture. Designs can be polished, and the most efficient and cost-effective methods
of production can be determined long before the first length of sheet metal is stamped.
The aerospace industry is far from alone in latching on to the potential benefits offered by
PLM. Most Fortune 500 manufacturers, from Toyota (which uses Dassault's complete
PLM suite—Catia, Delmia and Enovia) to General Motors (a UGS client), golf club
manufacturer Ping (PTC) and consumer goods makers such as Playtex (Agile Software),
are at various stages of implementing PLM suites.
Potential savings vary depending on the complexity of the product being manufactured,
but some analysts estimate that the time and cost savings on more complicated products
can be as much as 50%. That has translated into PLM becoming a hot software category,
growing at an annual compound rate of about 8.3%, according to research firm CIMdata
of Ann Arbor, Mich. In a report released in October, 2006, CIMdata forecast that
investments in PLM would grow from about $19 billion in 2006 to $27 billion by 2010.
But underlying that promise are very real dangers. And the potential pitfalls, such as
compatibility problems between different CAD packages, are more common than most
chief information officers might admit, according to Kubotek COO Bean. Other
challenges include everything from maintaining a current and accurate data warehouse
for product information, to ensuring that multiple manufacturing partners have the latest
software updates, dealing with user training issues and gaining executive support so that
rules can be enforced across department and inter-company boundaries.
The risk is compounded by the fact that companies are basing their product rollouts, and
by extension their very businesses, on these platforms. Mistakes can exact a heavy price.
Airbus' $6 billion problem offers technology leaders and CEOs a number of stark lessons
in what can go wrong in implementing PLM systems. But even more important, Boeing's
response to the problems at Airbus, and its own use of PLM on the 787 Dreamliner
program, offer guidance on what can and should be done to avoid the same turbulence.
Born in a Storm
Airbus' 2006 nightmare with PLM can actually be traced back to the giant company's
difficult birthing process in 2001. Work on the A380 was carved up among four players,
so that at its founding in 2001, Airbus had offices and factories at 16 sites spread across
four countries and employing 41,000 people. Each country had a level of independence to
go its own way when it came to systems and technology.
This lack of strict uniformity of processes and technologies laid the seeds for what was
later to grow into an entangled vine of trouble for Airbus. The systems had been set up
under the old structure. No one was watching who was using what versions of Catia. It
may be a systems issue, but as much as anything, it was a management issue.
Airbus' lax enforcement of a single lingua franca for design was at the heart of the A380's
later problems. While there are many ways that different CAD systems, and even
different editions of the same CAD programs, can trip up a product's design, those ways
become multiplied with the complexity of the end product and the increased number of
suppliers creating parts or components for its manufacture.
By contrast, Boeing’s management took no chances. Well before Airbus' problem
became public, the U.S. aerospace manufacturer had put into place a rigorous set of
requirements to ensure that the same edition of Catia was used by everyone connected
with the shaping of the Dreamliner.
At least one Airbus manager was well aware of a CAD incompatibility disaster. Martin
Horwood, lead engineer for CAD capability development at Airbus U.K., co-authored an
article titled "CAD Data Quality" in the May-June 2005 issue of Engineering Designer in
which he warned, "With data arriving into the digital mock-up (DMU) from a globally
dispersed design community, including industrial partners, suppliers and subcontractors,
it is imperative that the CAD data is of the right quality. Failure … will cause the DMU
to be inaccurate and not fulfill its task, leading to expensive reworks in real life."
And fail it did. With its German designers creating wiring bundles to fit inside one set of
spaces in the A380's fuselage using Catia V4, and the French designers having created
the fuselage wiring spaces using the more modern Catia V5, the actual wiring bundles
were unable to fit.
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