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Life Cycle
Data Management for Six Sigma Product Quality Phase II
Background:
U.S. manufacturing firms and DoD Depots are under increasing pressure to reduce
operating and sustainment costs while also significantly reducing lead times for
new and repaired/refurbished parts. The following objectives are critical to
success:
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Eliminate Quality
“escapes,” occurrences where parts with non-conformances escape detection
and are passed on to the next downstream customer
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Streamline the new
product launch and change in design processes to significantly reduce both
calendar time and cost
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Ensure that up-to-date
and accurate product definition data is readily accessible to all
participants in the supply chain (i.e. OEMs, suppliers, Depots), throughout
the product life cycle
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Improve warfighter
readiness through better part quality (and the reliability impact of
improved quality) plus reduced cycle time for mods.
All of these objectives are
supported by the proposed Phase II project, which will build upon the
capabilities developed during Phase I in the OEM environment and also extend
them to the Depot environment.
Problem:
The Depot environment presents additional challenges, which were identified but
not addressed during Phase I. The design of weapons systems currently being
maintained frequently predates 3D CAD systems. As a result, Depots often need to
produce parts where the only technical data available consists of 2D engineering
drawings. In most of those cases, the Depot will create a 3D model, create and
annotate a 2D drawing from the 3D model, check the new drawing against the old
one, and use the new drawing to drive manufacturing processes. The result is
that in current practice, downstream manufacturing applications and processes
are driven by three sources of truth in the:
Opportunities for human error
are compounded, and the business process just described is inherently slow and
expensive. In addition, for Depots, any error that delays replacement part
availability will also delay returning a valuable asset to service.
The Phase II project will expand and extend the capabilities developed during
Phase I them to the Depot environment on a pilot basis. Anniston Army Depot (ANAD)
and Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) will be the principal Depot
participants during Phase II, but others are expected to participate in project
reviews and monitor results.
Proposed Solution / Approach:
Phase II tasks, planned to begin in 2Q 2005, will extend the integration effort
and will include conducting full-scale pilot demonstrations of the system. The
pilot’s scope will include “Use Cases” that begin with part design and extend
all the way through manufacturing. Phase II will also include a pilot
demonstration of PLM tool deployment at a Depot.
Phase I culminated in an integration approach that makes use of data files at
the interfaces between applications. That approach is effective but requires
users to import work files from other applications and write new ones to
Teamcenter®. In Phase II Cohesia and BCT will define objects analogous to UGS’
GDE objects and will use web services, allowing the applications to exchange
information without direct user involvement in the process. The resulting system
will allow users to call MASS® and Inspector applications from inside Teamcenter®
and to view data from anywhere.
Also in Phase II, the team will address the need for linkage to STEP standards
to comply with DoD requirements. The STEP community has already begun to address
embedded tolerance information. The project team will survey current STEP
standards and create a report that suggests extensions compatible with project
results. Where appropriate standards exist, UGS will create translators to STEP
formats from Teamcenter® data. The current STEP AP-224 edition 2 standard
defines the following data elements:
All the listed data elements
except manufacturing features are used in Phase I technology. The data structure
for feature management is already defined in Teamcenter®. At least two
technologies exist that can extract manufacturing feature lists in AP-224 data
format from AP-203 solid models. The planned approach is to extract
characteristics per Phase I, use the NX STEP AP203 adapter to produce a STEP
file of the part solid model, import a manufacturing feature list, assemble
additional AP-224 data from Teamcenter®, and create an adapter that will pull
all that data from Teamcenter® and output it as an AP-224 file. STEP Tools will
manually create a valid AP-224 file that will be used to test the import
function.
Deliverables:
• Architecture and design
documents
• Depot process mapping
• Cost/benefits and ROI analysis
• Enhanced Teamcenter® user interface for characteristic management
• SMART Model integration
• Step AP-224 Use Cases and proof-of-concept demo (for Export). New
functionality for Teamcenter®, NX, MASS®, and BCT including:
– Raster drawing
extraction by BCT
– CMM interface from BCT
– BCT writes Balloon data to Teamcenter® GDEs
– Object level integration
– Teamcenter® writes Drawing Revisions to MASS®
– Teamcenter® reads Specification characteristics from MASS®
– Teamcenter® reads First Article Inspection archive from MASS®
– Virtual MASS® sessions from Teamcenter® environment
– Capability from BCT to compare drawings and extracted characteristics
– NX and Teamcenter® enhancements for SMART Model integration and
visualization.
Benefits / Impact:
The Industry and/or Depot-wide impact of the proposed PLM capabilities that will
be developed in Phase II are substantial:
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Reduces field escapes and
rework/warranty costs associated with misapplication of requirements
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Delivers significant
process cycle time reductions for Depots, OEMs, and suppliers
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Facilitates a clearer
understanding of requirements
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Provides a standardized
format(s) to report results
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Provides a standardized
process for Quality and Design Engineering to review characteristic results
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Provides ready access to
data needed in quality audit processes
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Compliance—significant
quality improvements at prime and supplier levels, effective roll out of
AS9102
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Productivity—more
efficient use of engineering and manufacturing resources, eliminates manual
input of characteristic information, reduces administrative effort in
tracking of changes
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Aftermarket—reduces costs
in support of fielded products, escape and warranty cost reductions
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Repair—faster cycles
through process planning and numerical control programming, reduces
potential for errors, and takes time out of repair process
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Sustainment—quality
improvement takes waste and cost out of component acquisition and improves
field reliability
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Shortens the cycle from
field repair and Depot repair experience to design improvement.
Duration:
The project duration is
estimated to be two years.
Program Manager: Tony Haynes, (734) 995-4930,
tonyh@ncms.org
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