PLM Based Approach to the Industrialization of Aeronautical Assemblies

Abstract The design processes of an aircraft are highly complex and involve a large number of multidisciplinary teams. The current organizational, methodological and technological model, based on concurrent engineering working methods, creates a gap between functional design engineering and industrial design engineering. Such gap is both at the information management level and at communication level, and creates inefficiencies in the working processes. Airbus Military launched the CALIPSOneo project to investigate how to improve the current industrialization design processes and to facilitate a collaborative working environment to the multidisciplinary design teams. As a result of the CALIPSOneo project, PLM tools were adapted to develop working methods based on collaborative engineering, and particularly to develop the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU). Such iDMU contains information of the product, of the assembly processes and of the resources needed during the execution of such processes. iDMU, facilitates the implementation of collaborative working procedures between functional and industrial design engineers, the 3D virtual verification and validation of the assembly processes, and the automation of extracting documentation, in several formats (paper, electronic, augmented reality), needed to execute the assembly processes at the shop floor.