Leveraging Technologies
by Jeff Schiesser, Cessna Aircraft Company

The editor of this fine publication persuaded me to write an article for this month's addition of the COE NewsNet to communicate about my upcoming presentation at the COE Fall 2002 Conference & TechniFair, September 29-October2 in Tampa, Florida. Not wanting to disappoint our dear friend and one of the founding fathers of COE, I graciously agreed.

As outlined by the abstract below, my presentation will attempt to highlight some of the benefits of leveraging the Virtual Product Definition pipeline and strategies for implementing the enabling technologies.

Remember the good 'ol days? When all we had to deal with was mainframe and workstation CATIA and one user interface? Things were much simpler then! So here we are at Cessna, we have Workstation CATIA V4, saving models to NFS shares (still...), a VPM repository for all new product development and associated database worries, datalinks, etc…, and a 3Dcomm server to give us Web-based access. And finally all of our custom applications give us competitive advantage or make us work out of the box. If that's not enough, let's throw in a 3D authoring tool replacement, V5 on windows, and UNIX. And let's revamp all our V4 design processes to fit V5; and let's advance into LCA from VPM. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Welcome to the ever-advancing world of PLM technologies! Enough of the fond memories, lets get onto the future. In my presentation, I'll try to shed some insight, solutions, and possible strategies for answering such questions as:

• So what is the Virtual Product Definition Pipeline and how can it be leveraged?
• How can we possibly implement a new technology before we finish developing a product using the current technology?
• But I'm multi-cad, now what?
• How can I send usable data to my suppliers?

Over the years, Cessna has evolved from:

2Dpaper—>2Delectronic—> 3Dwireframe—>3D solids—>3Dpart based design—>Digital Mockup—>Process Simulation—>??

During this evolution, as a company, Cessna has designed, built, certified, and brought to market seven new products. Having a sound strategy by which we integrated new technologies with the onset of new product development was critical to our success.

To hear more about this and to get answers to the questions above and many more, I welcome you to attend my presentation at the COE Fall 2002 Conference & TechniFair!

G-13: Why Leverage the Virtual Product Definition Pipeline?
Wednesday, October 2, 3:00-3:45 p.m.

This presentation will provide an overview of the end-to-end product development process at Cessna Aircraft Company as it relates to leveraging the Virtual Product Definition Pipeline. We all face the challenge of implementing new technologies as we race to develop new products for our customers, much like changing the rails without stopping the train. How do we accelerate new technology implementations without disrupting the processes they support in order to reap the promised benefits? Over the years Cessna leadership has actively supported the Digital Innovation/Integration advancements we have seen with technology tools such as CATIA V4/V5, VPM, and DELMIA. You will hear how Cessna views these challenges, examples of leveraging these technologies, and the vision they have for moving forward and continuing their success.

Hope to see you there!