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:

• Eliminate Quality “escapes,” occurrences where parts with non-conformances escape detection and are passed on to the next downstream customer

• Streamline the new product launch and change in design processes to significantly reduce both calendar time and cost

• 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

• 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:

• Original 2D engineering drawing

• New solid model

• New 2D engineering drawing

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:

• An AP-203 edition 2 solid model (embedded GD&T and notes)

• Manufacturing features

• Process information

• Administrative information about the part.

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:

• Reduces field escapes and rework/warranty costs associated with misapplication of requirements

• Delivers significant process cycle time reductions for Depots, OEMs, and suppliers

• Facilitates a clearer understanding of requirements

• Provides a standardized format(s) to report results

• Provides a standardized process for Quality and Design Engineering to review characteristic results

• Provides ready access to data needed in quality audit processes

• Compliance—significant quality improvements at prime and supplier levels, effective roll out of AS9102

• Productivity—more efficient use of engineering and manufacturing resources, eliminates manual input of characteristic information, reduces administrative effort in tracking of changes

• Aftermarket—reduces costs in support of fielded products, escape and warranty cost reductions

• Repair—faster cycles through process planning and numerical control programming, reduces potential for errors, and takes time out of repair process

• Sustainment—quality improvement takes waste and cost out of component acquisition and improves field reliability

• 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