FOKKER ELMO is one of the world largest providers of systems and wiring for the aerospace and defense industry. The company has developed a tool (WDMS - Wiring, Design and Manufacturing System) to handle the increased complexity of wiring harness design, development, integration, and production, which involves both control and process of an enormous amount of data. In 2009, FOKKER ELMO signed a contract with the Canadian aircraft manufacturer BOMBARDIER AEROSPACE to design and supply the electrical wiring Interconnection system for the new CSeries aircraft family.

Recently, FOKKER ELMO contracted ELSYS’s solutions to convert existing wiring system diagram and started new harness design add-on’s.

Both companies started two projects, combining their knowledges and expertises.

The first project was the implementation of an automatic retrieval and transfer of the existing PTC CADDS 5 schematics and data into the ELSYS’s ELECTRE software for electrical schematics.

For more information please visit http://www.fokker.com/elmo and www.e-elsys.com

GKN Aerospace, a Tier One supplier to the global aviation industry, sought to eliminate the time-consuming process of troubleshooting composite lay-ups on the shop floor and avoid data translation concerns.
Leveraging Dassault Systèmes PLM solutions, the company reduced manufacturing engineering time and greatly improved collaboration throughout the extended enterprise. In that process, Pertinence Suite from Intercim was chosen to ensure digital continuity from engineering to production. The solutions enable GKN Aerospace to electronically deliver planning and work instructions to the shop floor, monitor information, and generate activity and quality reports to tightly connect the physical world of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) with the virtual world of PLM.

A Picture Is Worth One Thousand Words

Powerpoint presentation and brochures are really important to understand what a product can do. But it’s not always enough. The best way to understand something is to talk with someone who will explain all the features you have to know. A few weeks ago Intercim made a webinar about composite manufacturing and they had the great idea to record it. Everybody can now access to this webinar and see what Pertinence Suite can do.

The partnership between The Boeing Company and Intercim started in 2004. At that time, Boeing chose Intercim’s Pertinence Suite powered by Velocity® as a key component of the transformational manufacturing system processes defined for the 787 program. Building an airplane is an extremely complex and highly regulated process and Boeing was looking for a solution offering flexibility and scalability. The flexibility needed to be in how the company would handle reports and also gather data. In addition, Boeing wanted a scalable solution to keep pace with the growth of the program. Intercim was selected based on its ability to support these goals.

Today, Pertinence Suite in the 787’s Final Assembly is an important part of the Boeing toolkit that ensures materials and tools are accounted for throughout the process and installed according to the documented plans. On the shop floor, mechanics are equipped with a tablet PC and any information is available through the wireless device for real- time visibility on the production process of the airplane. The Pertinence Suite is helping Boeing’s partners and suppliers around the globe stay on track.

Pertinence Suite helps Boeing maintain a critical communication link with its worldwide supplier base. The solution supports the program with a real time and paperless process that improves production visibility. John Todd, Intercim CEO, concludes, “The extensive use of composite materials, a global network of component and subassembly manufacturing partners makes this aircraft truly unique; Intercim is proud to support the Boeing 787 team and to be part of this program. Our congratulations to The Boeing Company!”

ELSYS serves top companies from aerospace, automotive, rail and manufacturing industries. Their applications are designed for industries which develop products combining mechanical and electrical technologies and require specialized diagram, bundle and harness design and wiring applications.

Air France Industries core business has always been the maintenance or modification of aircraft, being civil or military. For some years now, Air France Industries has been developing competency in aircraft design, leading to the improvement of passengers & crews comfort and also the avionics. In those areas, they faced some electrical systems related challenges. In this field, thanks to ELSYS and Dassault Systèmes, Air France Industries is now fully able to meet their customers' expectations.

The challenges

• Reduce aircraft down time.
• Keep to the standards and environments of every aircraft manufacturer.
• Harmonize designs around a consistent set of electrical design and management tools.
• Manage the product life cycle from end to end and ensure traceability.

How ELSYS made things happen

The initial solution chosen by Air France Industries is based on ELECTRE for wiring diagram studies, SMARTELECTRE for the management of electrical data in SMARTEAM, and CATELECTRE for integration with CATIA.

By doing so, Air France engineers can accommodate the maintenance, modification and design requirements of aircraft systems and specific features (seat layout, galleys, toilets, passenger entertainment, etc.) while improving aircraft down times. These solutions make it easier and simpler for Air France Industries to satisfy the special requirements of aeronautical engineering, such as:
- ATA standards (Airbus and Boeing), when modifying and creating electrical engineering documents,
- Specific documentation requirements in connection with configuration management,
- Simple, transparent management of electrical parts lists, however complex, in SmarTeam.

The customer's voice

“The ELECTRE solution that has been implemented saves us an enormous amount of time and totally meets the manufacturers’ standards. It covers almost 100 % of our requirements…The complementary of the electrical CAD products from ELSYS and the data management products from Dassault Systèmes is excellent. With the SMARTELECTRE integration platform, it means we can manage the life cycle of electrical products from end to end. This advanced solution makes a major contribution to our 100 % quality objective… I have great confidence in ELSYS - they’re very honest people. They are proactive, customer-focused and always find the solution. With them you can say that it’s possible, it’s quick and it’s not expensive! CGM Import-Export is a prime example of this.”

Frédéric Speyer, IT Project Manager, EDP Support,
AIR France Industries, Roissy Charles de Gaulle

You can read more about the successful collaboration between ELSYS and Air France Industries and contact me.

Jéronimo FREITAS - Business Development ELSYS
Twitter: @jeronimofreitas

Image courtesy of Traceparts

Airbus' planes fly into the sky thanks to a lot of people working hard to make it happen. For that they also work with 3D tools to study, create, test, etc. every single part of each plane. Airbus and its partners in French plants are working on CATIA V5 to design the tooling. "The tooling is made up of a large number of standard parts bought from supplier catalogues: fastenings, clamping and handling parts, bushings, cylinders, etc. and each site or sub-contractor was modeling parts it needed with a specific name and level of detail", says Laurent SENOT, a Dassault Data Services consultant who works with Airbus.

This being said, Airbus was looking for a solution to simplify this process and get a homogeneous library of components that would be used by each site and suppliers.

Traceparts brought the solution

Our partner Traceparts is a French provider who delivers standard parts library seamlessly integrated with CATIA V5. They were choosen by Airbus France, Airbus Spain and Airbus UK for its functionalities, its content and its ability to adapt its solution to their specific requirements.

Additionnally to the fact that they are the only one library developer to have the status of CAA V5 Software Partner, they were able to customize their software on a number of imperatives leading to a close collaboration.

Traceparts and Airbus are working on a brand new version, currently in a deployment phase that integrates notable developments such as the automatic replacement of instanced parts by other components and allow Airbus to build its own parts into the library.

Discover how Traceparts can work for you. Read the full success story.

Alexandre and the Traceparts Team

Dear technology enthusiasts,
This Monday and Tuesday (September 28th-29th) is being held in Chicago the 2nd Composites World Expo.
Dassault Systemes is of course well represented, with a booth and several speaking slots. 
One of them, on Tuesday September 29th, is shared with the DS partner Intercim around the theme of Manufacturing Excellence for Composites.
We thought it would be interesting to look at what Intercim offers for Composite Manufacturers through a customer case.

In the wake of the all-new Boeing 787, the first airliner predominantly built from carbon composites, the entire industry is seeing a major shift of the demand.

To put things in perspective, let’s look at the market dynamics. The Industry is gradually transitioning from experimental and low volume productions to massive amounts .
The amount of carbon fibers consumed by the Industry is expected to double over the next 6 years. Are the manufacturers ready for that “bungee” jump?

Reducing costs of composite manufacturing processes while coping with production ramp-ups now becomes strategic. Let’s look at the case of EADS Composites Atlantic, and how difficult it can be to ramp up a composite production.

Wonder what it feels like not being able to deliver when the customer asks for more?

“In the fall of 2006, five years into a major contract for the biweekly delivery of ten types of products (leading edges, rudders...) to be used on aircraft manufacturing, we had slipped dangerously behind schedule in manufacturing and deliveries, up to 6 months late on one product in particular,” recalls Séverine Guitton, Head of Quality & Methods for Composites Atlantic Limited (CAL).
On the most heavily affected leading edge products, the scrap rate had reached 13% and rework hit 28%! However, there was absolutely no logic that could explain this highly irregular defect. All of the manufacturing parameters, constantly checked and rechecked, fit perfectly with the plans.

Once the INTERCIM solution for Composite Manufacturing (Pertinence Suite) was in place, workers began collecting 96 parameters at various stages of the  production process, for each new part that was manufactured. The “Rule Discovery” module from INTERCIM, a patented technology, quickly identified two totally unrelated and until then unsuspected characteristics as directly influencing the recurrent defects. “Rules Discovery enabled us to clearly establish specific rules regarding key parameters, far from any known scientific explanation and most strikingly in total contradiction to all of our intuitions,” underlines Séverine Guitton. Then the workers receive conditional notifications in real time during the execution with the INTERCIM Operations Advisor module, live on the shop floor. “By applying these rules to our normal operating procedures, we immediately reduced the scrap rate from 13% to zero and rework came down from 28% to less than 1%,” she continues.

Want to find out more on INTERCIM’s capabilities for Composite Manufacturers? Please visit www.intercim.com.

Does the Composites Atlantic example inspire you?
And what if that could apply to other industries as well?

Romain Lavault for Intercim and Jacques