Long-time PLM partners IBM
and Dassault Systemes are the latest to stake
claim to a supporting role in aerospace giant European
Aeronautic Defense & Space Co.'s (EADS) PHENIX project, a major global
initiative to bring efficiencies to the firm's increasing complex product
development processes.
PHENIX,
which stands for PLM Harmonization Enhanced Integration and Excellence, is a
cross-divisional EADS project to leverage 3-D collaboration tools to streamline
product design and manufacturing processes, making product information more
readily accessible to suppliers and partners around the world. PHENIX aims to
achieve harmonization of enterprise PLM methods, processes, tools and data
between EADS business units (which include Airbus, Eurocopter and EADS Astrium)
and create deeper integration between mechanical, electrical and software
components of product development. The initiative is also designed to help
facilitate design collaboration across an extended supply chain, where
different partners in different global locations are responsible for designing
and building different components of an aircraft, EADS officials say.
"The new PLM paradigm developed
under PHENIX program will enable EADS to support the ever-increasing complexity
of configuration, compliance, global collaboration and the huge increase in the
amount of product data, which needs to be handled," says Jean-Yves
Mondon, vice president and head of EADS' PHENIX program. The program will, in
turn, drive the creation of more cost-effective and innovative products, Mondon says, by protecting against quality issues and improving cooperation
between the various EADS business users.
The IBM/Dassault tools – CATIA for product design, ENOVIA for
product data management and DELMIA for digital manufacturing – are currently
deployed across EADS and will serve as "Backbone B," the CAD/CAM-related
building blocks within the PLM portfolio, Mondon says. The IBM/Dassault
lineup will help EADS deploy a 3-D Master Reference for digital mockup, aiding
in increased collaboration across multiple divisions; leverage 3-D and
simulation capabilities for turning complex 3-D design and manufacturing
processes into tested and repeatable models; predict product behaviors, which
will aid in shrinking design cycle times and create a flow of key design data,
the goal being to reduce costly missteps in the earliest stages of product
development.
Subsequent versions of the suite with more comprehensive
integration capabilities will better foster the objectives of the PHENIX
program, according to Stephan Clambaneva, IBM's PLM marketing manager. "The
next layer of integration [in V6] will eliminate a lot of the costly errors
that EADS has run into in the past," says Clambaneva, specifically referring
to a widely publicized design snafu with the wiring harnesses which delayed the
Airbus
A380. "In the past, we provided more of an ad hoc integration. The ability
to have one single digital mockup environment and have teams from the
electrical, mechanical and systems side all work together eliminates those
errors and provides a level of integration in teaming that wasn't possible in
previous versions of the software."
IBM and Dassault are not the only PLM vendors to score a piece
of the EADS PHENIX deal. In August, rival PTC
announced what officials there called its potentially
biggest deal in its 24-year-history with EADS. According to Eric Speciel, director of business development for PTC, the recent
IBM/Dassault announcement doesn't alter the role of PTC's Windchill as the
Enterprise PLM backbone for the PHENIX project. "Backbone A" of the PHENIX
project, the master product definition core PLM tool, consists of Windchill and
PHENIXCHANGE within EADS, and supports configuration management, data
management and lifecycle management.
"EADS is using products from
different companies to secure its best-in-class portfolio of PLM building
blocks," Mondon says. "It is not using competing platforms for the same
discipline within PLM. Many other backbones will also be integrated into the overall
EADS core PLM solution, for supporting separate areas of our PLM requirements.
This is a very necessary approach as there is no single provider today that can
supply all of EADS' PLM needs."
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