PROJECTS

AIRCRAFT CONSTRUCTION

The aircraft industry in particular relies on innovative and ever lighter materials. Connecting aluminium parts with rivets is a well-established technology that continues to be optimised and further automated. Requirements regarding flexibility, kinematics properties or machine control concepts increase depending on the client’s particular brief and the component geometry. International competition is increasing the pressures on costs and requirements in terms of process expertise and system solutions right up to the supply of turnkey production buildings.

Client: Machine and plant engineers in connection technology sector > 250 employees

Branch: Riveting plant engineering

Topic: Process optimisation in R&D, cutting production costs, overall IT concept, product modularisation, organisation of parts lists, product configuration, variant management

Situation: The design workloads for orders and adaptations were too high and the throughput times no longer matched customers’ requirements. External engineers had to cushion capacity bottlenecks. The challenge was to achieve fundamental modularisation and flexible standardisation for the machines and plants. That meant a fundamental change to working methods in sales, project planning and, in particular, design, including parts lists management. Brief:

• Survey of existing situation and concept phase
• Demonstrating and assessing weaknesses and potential benefits
• Deriving specific requirements for actions, tasks packages, suitable project organisation and a coordinated project roadmap
• Integration of mechanical, electrical, electronics, control and software components
• Setting up configurable product structures with functional and mechatronic function and system modules
• Systematic support during implementation of the operational modularisation and standardisation process
• Mapping the new structures, including product logic, and the new processes in the existing systems
• Creating the necessary data consistency across CAD, PDM and ERP

Result:

• Changes to the way of thinking – more configuration instead of always redesigning.
• The creation and maintenance of machine and component masters are carried out – in terms of organisation and system – separately from the job-specific, adapted designs.
• Sales pitches are based on technically planned and keenly priced function modules agreed with sales.
• Change and release management for products is carried out by an interdisciplinary team.
• As was hoped for, production costs and throughput times have been cut. At the same time, despite good numbers of orders, the company still has capacity available for innovative new and ongoing developments.