Jun 1, 2019
About the Customer
The customer is an American system design and technology development company for the Aerospace, Space & Defense sector. Building on a foundation of fundamental space physics research, the technology startup designs, develops, builds and deploys novel ground-based and space-based instrumentation and sophisticated computer models, which are used by their customers for space weather monitoring and other specialized applications to help mitigate potentially catastrophic disruptions to their vital systems. The company is involved in multiple NASA missions, has successfully flown CubeSats for NSF, and supports both the public and private sectors.
The Customer’s Need
Together with partner Saratech, our Industries eXcellence team has been working with the division of the customer’s organization that is responsible for the production of the most efficient single-use rocket delivering payloads into the Earth’s orbit. Before calling in our experts, this division was facing a number of challenges due to the disconnected data management processes between their engineering and manufacturing operations. Their major pain points included manufacturing work not being performed, manufacturing engineers being notified of changes last minute with unrealistic deadlines, or sometimes not being notified at all.
As in most manufacturing companies, the customer’s engineering bill of materials (EBOM), which defines the product as designed and contains the list of all the items, parts, components, sub-assemblies and assemblies in the rocket, is organized by the design engineering team. The EBOM is then handed off to the manufacturing engineering team, which uses the information contained within the EBOM to drive the creation of a manufacturing Bill of Materials (MBOM) for the final product. The MBOM should contain all the parts and assemblies required to build a complete and shippable rocket.
Before our project, the exchange of BOM information between the customer’s design and manufacturing teams was still being done manually. There was no single source from which different divisions of the team could go to pull the information they needed. Moreover, there were no accountability checks in place to prevent human and process errors, nor was there a reliable way to ensure that the information for manufacturing was complete, accurate and up-to-date.
Because the MBOM is structured to support how a product is assembled, without a good MBOM, the rocket was at risk of being built slowly, over budget, incorrectly or not at all. Given the complexity and cost of the rocket being produced, there was no room for error. The customer partnered with Engineering Industries eXcellence to eliminate these risks and find the best solution to bridge the gap between their design and manufacturing data.
About the Project
For the first phase of the customer’s digital transformation initiative, our Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) team was brought in to help the customer utilize MBOM. The project enabled the customer to reconcile an MBOM from their existing EBOM, ensuring that their manufacturing engineering team was not only accounting for all their parts, but doing so in a reliable and efficient way.
The customer was already using Siemens Teamcenter as the repository for the management of their product design data, but they were not leveraging the same system for their manufacturing data. While most companies see Teamcenter as a tool to manage engineering data alone, we focus on Teamcenter Manufacturing as a central environment for all product and production data management.
In this first phase, our team of specialists conducted a thorough analysis before designing and implementing a foundational core for Teamcenter Manufacturing. Engineering Industries eXcellence implemented Manufacturing Process Planner (MPP) to provide manufacturing a form of communication between engineering and manufacturing, involved in early design releases that require manufacturing input, and accounting for all parts and assemblies prior to manufacturing planning. This solid, grounded digital foundation based on customer use cases and requirements will facilitate the customer moving forward in the following phases of implementing Industry 4.0 technology and methodology.
About the Solution
A complete, accurate and readily available manufacturing Bill of Materials is critical for a manufacturing business. The MBOM enables the final transition from product concept to a concrete, touchable object. Thanks to the solution delivered, the customer was able to bridge the digital gap between their EBOM and MBOM, and between their engineering and manufacturing operations in general. A complete and reliable MBOM will enable them to make better decisions about how to get their product efficiently and cost-effectively into their own customers’ hands.
Even more importantly, an MBOM drives manufacturing, operations, purchasing and logistics for a product. The information from the MBOM feeds the business systems used to order parts and build the product. These include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Materials Resource Planning (MRP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Integrations between Teamcenter Manufacturing as well as the customer’s new and complete MBOM will therefore also drive improvements across all levels of their organization and operations.
The Future Roadmap
Following the successful implementation of phase one, our team plans to continue to work with the customer in the next phases of their digital transformation journey. For instance, even though the customer designs single-use rockets that will only be launched once, the rocket will have different variations based on the payload it is designed to transport into orbit. Currently, the customer has no digital tool to help them manage many different product configurations.
In the future, the customer is also looking into adopting an MES that is fully integrated to their other digital tools for manufacturing. As a leading system integrator and technical expert in PLM, MES and enterprise business systems, Engineering Industries eXcellence looks forward to continuing to support the customer as a dedicated partner for Industry 4.0.
