Assembly Design and Documentation Phase I

Background

U.S. manufacturing firms and DoD depots are under increasing pressure to reduce operating and maintenance costs while also significantly reducing lead times for new and repaired/refurbished parts.

Since the early 80’s aircraft engine providers have used complex assemblies of 3D CAD data to assist in the engineering design of components. This process eliminated the need to create expensive physical mockups used for interference and clearance checking. Even with complete 3D definitions, the downstream assembly/disassembly planning process, and associative documentation, is still developed using an Engineering Bill of Material (BOM), 2D drawings, and specifications.

Problem

Engine assembly/disassembly planning and documentation is a manual process that is often dependent on the skill and experience of the individual defining the process. The current processes have not fully realized the benefits of working from a complete digital representation. The sequence of assembly/disassembly operations is determined manually from the Engineering BOM. The associated documentation for assembly planning and maintenance manuals are created manually. Any changes in the engineering design or assembly process have to be incorporated into the documentation manually.

Solution/Approach

The Assembly Design and Documentation project will utilize commercial software solutions from UGS, including Teamcenter™ Manufacturing and eM-Simulate. The technology developed by GE Global Research Center MPAD will be integrated into eM-Simulate. The integration will be targeted to the following:

• Automatic assembly process generation according to party geometry constrains
• Verification of the assembly process in a 3D dynamic environment
• Generation and editing of assembly and disassembly path for each part
• Generation and editing of parallel and sequential sequences
• Editing of the simulation for documentation generation
• Generate AVI and picture documentation
• Generation and editing of documentation templates
• Creation of documentation for each assembly step to a predefined template.

MPAD provides the necessary algorithms to create and edit an intelligent assembly and disassembly sequence based on complex geometric shapes.
eM-Simulate is a UGS product designed for assembly process verification that enables generation and edits of assembly paths and sequences in a managed 3D environment. In addition, eM-Simulate has assembly sequence generation capability utilizing the Engineering BOM hierarchy as a basis. Automatic assembly sequence generation will be enhanced to accept arbitrary 3D solid assembly models (technology provided from MPAD) as the basis and therefore removing the dependence of complex Engineering BOM hierarchical structures.

Deliverables

Phase I project deliverables are as follows:

• Preliminary current and future state process maps of the assembly design and documentation development and revision processes
• Integration of technology developed by GE, with UGS technologies (MPAD functionality of automatic assembly sequencing embedded into UGS eM-Simulate)
• Results of validation testing by GE
• Limited templates for the reuse of intelligent sequencing capabilities from validation testing
• Preliminary measured improvement in change management effectiveness, productivity, and cycle time reduction (based on pilot results)
• Preliminary cost/benefit analysis
• Phase I Interim project report and documentation.
• Phase II go-no-go decision.

Anticipated Benefits

The benefits of this project are improved productivity, elimination of errors, and reductions in lead time by linking assembly design and documentation processes to the full Engineering definition:

• Reduce manual effort to author complex assembly and maintenance manuals
• Work directly from complete Engineering definition
• Avoid time to identify and interpret specifications
• Improved generation of animated assembly instructions
• Improved quality and accuracy of the documentation
• Interaction animations: better content, no additional cost
• Positioned for automated flow of digitized procedures
• Reduce transcription risks
• Change impact analysis – accurate and complete propagation of design changes.

These anticipated benefits will be partially achieved in Phase I and will be fully achieved at the completion of the second phase planned for 2006 funding. At the completion of Phase I, the system will be tested and validated as operational. Work will remain for Phase II on automating user tasks and on the user interface.

Participants

Industry – GE Aircraft Engines, UGS Corporation, Manufacturing Resources, Inc.

Depots – OC-ALC, Albany Marine Depot

NCMS Program Manager: Tony Haynes, tonyh@ncms.org, 734-995-4930.