A Process-Centric CAx/IT Infrastructure Having a Revolutionary Impact on Product Simulation Integration
By Rod Dreisbach, Ph.D.
Senior Technical Fellow,
Chairman of the Boeing Technical Fellowship
Computational Structures Technology
The Boeing Company
rodney.l.dreisbach@boeing.com

Executive Overview
Executive management and strategists of engineering and manufacturing companies are continually bombarded with an ever-growing array of tools, technologies, and solutions that suppliers promise will bring immediate gains in productivity and efficiency. They are frequently left challenged with trying to assess the true benefits of the tools relative to their overall business operations. After investing heavily in the necessary software, training, and services, they often discover that their operating costs have increased, and their global business expectations were never met. This often occurs because implementation is often performed at a local departmental or functional level without consideration of the global impact to the company-level culture, processes, and business operations. Generally, the core competency of any software developer is to focus its resources on developing and servicing its products exclusively - isolated from the dynamic, heterogeneous environment of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) and proprietary tools in which the customer will inevitably deploy them. But, because of the manner in which business must be conducted today, industrial users are now looking for a global perspective on the deployment of new technologies within their proprietary processes to maximize their competitive advantage.

As the functionality and number of CAx computing tools increases within an engineering organization, isolation of the different functional groups and the end-user teams responsible for product development grows. The incompatibility of the data structures and formats of the different tools often result in task-level optimization while operating within a particular tool, at the expense of the overall process when the global flow of product information is considered. Productivity, at the macro-process level, remains very low. Communications can become strained between the various contributors of the development team, often in different geographic regions of an extended enterprise. Even organizing the program into multidisciplinary integrated product teams (IPT's) often does not resolve the underlying issues of data access, data quality control, data security, product data and process management, and data-relationship management across the multiple systems used within a team or across a program. Data quality, poor configuration control and management between data objects, loss of design intent, and poor visibility of product data often compromise attempts to perform concurrent engineering, distributed collaboration, or rapid design iterations and controlled change propagation. What is required is an effective process-centric strategy for exploiting the new technology.

Ironically, most of the claims made by the suppliers of business-critical tools overlook the order-of-magnitude benefits in overall cycle-time and cost reductions that can be achieved when their best-in-class solutions are implemented within an integrated, process-centric environment. The CAx/IT infrastructure that is required to achieve these improvements at an industrial program level must provide a foundational architecture that enables the various tools to interoperate seamlessly. This architecture must also enable the processes to be managed efficiently and the data to be accessed in real-time across the enterprise, and made directly usable for subsequent tasks. For the full benefits to be realized, a far more holistic approach to planning and implementing new technologies is required. It requires one with a balanced emphasis on the CAx/IT infrastructure and business process transformation necessary to integrate the technology and to enable effective collaboration, as well as to accommodate various cultural and organizational changes that may be needed within the enterprise.

The PSI (Product Simulation Integration) Project
A strategic initiative at BCAG, known as the PSI Project for Structures, is underway to reduce costs and cycle time in the design, analysis, and support of commercial transport airplanes. The "product" is the airplanes designed and built, and the services provided to customers for their airplane operations. "Simulation" includes the analytical and test processes performed to predict in-service behavior of the airplane structure in support of design requirements and objectives. "Integration" is the close binding of design, analysis, manufacturing, and support processes with the associated product information, as it supports reduced costs and cycle time.

The primary objectives of PSI are:

1. Establish and enhance preferred engineering and business processes
2. Improve the suite of engineering methods and tools, and migrate legacy applications and data
3. Integrate structural analysis and test with product definition information and manufacturing to reduce cycle time and costs.

Fundamental to the success of the PSI project in meeting its goals are establishing standard processes, associating life-cycle information to the product definition data for easy, reliable, and consistent retrieval, and adopting industry standards for sharing of these data to facilitate long-term data access.

Standard Processes and Computing Systems
Standard processes reduce variability in the way airplane products are designed, analyzed, and supported, thus lowering training, computing, process support, and sustaining costs. Standard computing systems reduce training due to a common look and feel of the system, as well as providing easy access to multiple computing operating systems and environments, where required.

Tie to Digital Product Definition
By linking analyses to the product definition data, the records substantiating the design decisions, strength, durability, damage tolerance analyses, and service history of the airplane parts and assemblies are made available for derivative airplane design and analysis, as well as sustaining current configurations. To be successful, these data must be available for the life of the airplane products. The PSI project is working to extend the definition of SSPD (Single Source Product Definition) to include analysis and test data that may not necessarily be physically linked, but at a minimum will be logically linked.

Data Exchange Standards
Evolving computing software and hardware systems have made the task of information retrieval increasingly difficult with time. The best opportunity to preserve the data generated today and to minimize regeneration tomorrow is through the adoption of standards for information exchange. Then, in principal, it is possible to unplug the old analysis or information management tool and plug in a new one without extensive conversion and disruption to the engineers and customers.

A Pilot VPM Environment
The aeroelastic structural design process is iterative because of complex aerodynamics interacting with complex aerospace vehicle structural arrangements. To obviate exhaustive static and dynamic physical laboratory and flights tests for optimally sizing the various structural components for all flight regimes, extensive use of analytical and computational methods are currently used during the design, development, and certification of flight vehicles. In support of these requirements, the Boeing PSI Project has been developing a new computing architecture based on EnoviaVPM that allows multiple engineering disciplines to interact and collaborate. This architecture is based on the philosophy of a Process Managed Digital Enterprise (PMDE), developed by Saeed Paydarfar, Ph.D. The requirements are to create an integrated architecture where various design tools and data - 3D models, design simulations, drawings, and auxiliary documents - all can co-exist with the associated engineering analysis tools and data for the entire product structure. A necessary requirement of this environment is that it provides real-time and batch access, as well as data and configuration management, for a wide spectrum of the engineering data that is needed during product definition.

The new computing environment and engineering processes to perform preliminary structural sizing and estimating vehicle weight for conventional commercial airplane configurations are expected to provide greater speed and accuracy during preliminary design and configuration development. The process requires the FEM-based (Finite Element) analysis and simulations to keep in step with vehicle configuration changes to ensure "analyses-in-the-loop." The challenge of the new process has been to consolidate many diverse sub-processes and applications into a single process-managed digital architecture, thereby dramatically reducing the cycle and convergence time from many months to a turn-around time of a week, following the definition for a new vehicle configuration.

When complete, this new architecture will assist Boeing in the preliminary design and analysis of its future conventional commercial aircraft, including the new 747X program. The Boeing PSI process specialists mapped and documented the engineering analysis processes with the respective subject matter experts, and then worked to implement their VPM environment within the Boeing computing infrastructure. The objectives of the project are to provide a VPM environment that enables information sharing, configuration control, and automated process management for both analysis and design. The overall system represents a network of sub-processes intended to convert a vehicle configuration definition into a converged solution comprised of a final sized FEM for the vehicle and the associated stiffness distributions. It comprises a complex architecture of analysis components involving: vehicle configuration definition, KBE applications, loft data, parametric data files, CATIA models and utilities, Boeing proprietary applications, scripts, flow logic algorithms, flight envelope data, and convergence criteria -- all within a heterogeneous, multi-platform infrastructure.

Another objective is to create a global VPM Framework architecture that provides a backbone and methodology enabling any engineering analysis component to be incorporated into the VPM environment, whereby the tool sets and databases are integrated and accessed via one, unified interface. Essentially, VPM provides the foundation for a "portal" that consolidates the preliminary design and analysis resources, spanning many distributed applications. This architecture manages the CATIA models, external data files, and documents for various airplane configurations, object maturities, and processes. This direct management is essential to ensure that invoking a particular component in VPM triggers the appropriate sub-processes through scripts. The processes, embedded into VPM User Exits, in turn, control the information flow through the corresponding sub-components. Publish and Subscribe automated messaging mechanisms are also implemented. This allows the Boeing subject matter experts using the VPM environment to be kept informed at key states along the process execution flow and at the end of execution of an invoked process. The VPM Publish and Subscribe mechanism is linked to the Boeing e-mail server for convenience of the end-users.

A new VPM database was created within the Boeing development environment. Furthermore, a custom VPM data schema - comprising objects, tables, attributes, model representation types, and a tailored VPM People and Organization security, roles and permissions, and user views - was defined and implemented. The most intensive and specialized task was that of developing the VPM User Exits to embed engineering analysis processes captured through the scripts. Finally, the VPM-A and PSN interface was customized to include these new classes and class methods directly within the VPM GUI. Now the processes are mapped to a degree that enables the components to be implemented in VPM. Configuration management is implemented to provide trace-ability of design and analysis CATIA models and datasets, and to manage the data associated with different vehicle baselines, trade studies, and variants. Versioning, revisioning, and change management processes are also implemented within VPM.

Conclusion
Planning is underway at Boeing to map additional engineering analysis processes and to determine the development strategy for integrating these processes into either VPM or Enovia v5. These tools provide a strategy, methodology, and architecture for ensuring a global perspective on deploying new technologies. Thus, disciplines, functions, and end-user teams that once were excluded from concurrent participation now begin to enjoy the full benefits of integration.

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Empowering the End Users
By Mark Williams COE DPC Chairman

The COE conference provides exposure to innovative and productive CAx/PDM technologies delivered by Dassault Systemes (DS), IBM and their partners. The COE Board of Directors oversees the management of these semiannual meetings. However, COE's viability is sustained by a diverse group of member companies who support and staff the end-user committees. These committees, "the DPCs" (Development Planning Council), are part of the backbone of COE.

The DPCs supply leadership for the different end-user committees. DPC membership is informal and open to all COE member companies. At an organizational level the DPCs are segregated into Process Groups such as Manufacturing, Engineering and Infrastructure. At an operational level the DPC Process Groups are broken into functional categories representing specific DS software products, as well as methodologies for their deployment and utilization. As an example the Infrastructure Group includes DPCs covering Hardware, Software Installation, and Training. The Engineering Group covers categories like Solid Modeling, Drafting, Analysis, and KBE. Today there are approximately 21 unique DPCs. That number changes as the technologies mature, new products evolve and user companies make the transition from CATIA V4 to CATIA V5.

The goal of each DPC is to organize and communicate the needs of the industry, and COE's member companies. It is the forum where end-users and application specialists work together to map-out a product's evolution by defining and prioritizing enhancement requests relative to Dassault's development strategy. The DPCs are also a great place to gather the latest information for our technology. DS and their partners use the DPC meetings to define and receive feedback on their strategy for future products. Enhancement requirements are submitted by member companies, evaluated, and then prioritized by the DPCs. They are then added to an electronic database where they can be tracked and dispositioned. Following review and implementation by the supplier, the results are published, tested and closed by the DPC. To sustain visibility throughout the COE organization, a metrics process is used to track and measure an individual DPC's progress toward managing its enhancement requirements.

It is the DPC process that enables COE to represent the needs of its members. However, the success of the DPC committees is contingent on their ability to add value to the product. This "value added" deliverable ensures the participation of both the supplier and the COE member companies. Ultimately, the realization of "value added" explains why COE is the largest end-user group conference throughout the software industry.

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V4-V5 Migration Working Group
By Jeff Schiesser

Mission/Purpose
Document the challenges/strategies for migrating to CATIA V5 and document common information sources for facilitating the migration from V4 to V5.

The idea for the team was conceived after the fall 1999 COE. We held our first formal meetings at the St. Louis COE (Fall 2000) and continue to organize and clarify our mission as to how best to collaborate our company's V5 initiatives. The team is composed primarily of COE member companies that have experienced prior migrations to new versions of CATIA, and support focals from IBM, Dassault, & Microsoft.

As a COE member company if you'd like to collaborate with this team, watch for future announcements in this newsletter, and the COE Website, or contact:

Jeff Schiesser
jschiesser@cessna.textron.com

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Education is Awareness
By Dave Ballard COE Board of Directors

Have you ever been in or observed a discussion about a topic when one of the people says, "I didn't know that!" to a fact that perhaps one of the parties felt was blatantly obvious or common knowledge? While people may shy away from the term ignorance because it is often incorrectly equated with stupidity, there is a difference between the two. Stupidity means comprehension is impossible as distinguished from ignorance, which is a gap in knowledge or experience that may be old hat for some. What you do with your knowledge will determine how people think of and remember you. Simply possessing this knowledge and hoarding it provides an immense egotistical power trip for some. Others get their warm feelings by sharing and accomplishing a knowledge transfer and leave their mark for generations to come.

The COE organization provides many opportunities for personal growth that I often hear people say, "I didn't know about that!" which can be a personal source of frustration for the conference organizers. At the Spring COE Conference 2001, many different types of informational and educational presentations were offered, from classroom style lectures and briefings to hands-on education presented by industry experts. They came to share their vast wealth of knowledge and was a tremendous value-add to conference attendance. Visit the COE Spring 2001 Web site to see what you may have missed.