A&D firms achieve program excellence with Siemens integrated verification management.
The complexity of aerospace and defense (A&D) products and the number of requirements that they must meet to gain customer or regulatory acceptance continues to grow. As a “system of systems” comprised of soft-ware, hardware and electronics, A&D products involve lengthy, multidisciplinary development programs and interrelated verification activities to gain customer or regulatory agency approval. Whether it’s a commercial airliner, weapons platform or a spacecraft, failure is not an option.
A&D companies compete in a global market place and execute programs with multiple global partners and suppliers. To be successful in this environment, A&D companies must demonstrate their ability to consistently execute programs across the extended organization, delivering products that meet requirements on-schedule and on-budget.
The Siemens PLM Software Verification Management solution enables companies to achieve this goal by connecting requirements to all tasks, analyses, tests and data involved.
Benefits
- Reduces program risks to schedule, budget, and deliverables
- Improves program performance with a single verification management system
- Increases traceability of requirements from program through design, analysis, and test
- Reduces verification costs with improved planning and execution
- Enables proactive management of requirement compliance with real-time reporting
- Accelerates program audits with accurate, up-to-date, documented deliverables and activities
Providing full lifecycle traceability
Programs must meet requirements that are set by their customers, contained in their contracts, and meet company product standards for design and safety, as well as industry requirements from regulatory authorities such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Teamcenter software from Siemens PLM Software enables all program activities to be driven by these requirements, from initial program goals to the individual components that will make up the final product. With Teamcenter, full product lifecycle traceability makes it possible to ensure that all requirements have an approved verification method, that the method is executed, and that appropriate results are recorded to support achievement of the requirements.
Synchronizing analysis from design through test Teamcenter is a full product lifecycle solution that can communicate requirements to all disciplines in the product development process as well as changes to those requirements. This single collaborative source permits design, analysis, and test organizations to work in unison to ensure that analysis and simulation models are synchronized with design models for both production and test articles, and that physical test articles conform to requirements across disciplines. By synchronizing these models, simulations representing the production design – as well as all the modifications made to the test article – remain valid for proving requirements are met. Teamcenter also provides integration of analysis-to-analysis (an often-overlooked failure point) by managing the process to take the outputs from one analysis and them as inputs to the next analysis, as well as all the other artifacts required to conduct the next analysis; other boundary conditions or inputs, models, etc. Only in this way are design analyses and tests truly integrated and connected.
Tracing the test to the physical test article Physical tests are a necessity for aerospace and defense products, and it’s imperative that tests prove that requirements are met. Proving a test valid requires that a sequence be followed from requirements to be verified to test plans that define the verification approach and that test articles and equipment are configured properly. Teamcenter establishes the path from requirements to test plans to test article to confirm that a test is required, properly planned, and accurately executed. If changes in requirements or the product design occur, Teamcenter can be used to immediately provide full visibility of their impact on plans, test articles, and tests including those already run that need to be re-executed. Teamcenter also maintains the complete history of all test articles and equipment, enabling full traceability to the past test article or analytical model configurations. In addition, Teamcenter provides complete instrumentation traceability: from measurement requirements defined by engineering in the test request; to the instrumentation plan; to the physical instrument installed on the test article and its calibration data through to the raw data and the reduced engineering unit data used for reporting compliance. Full traceability enables the ability to demonstrate that the test article matches the current engineering definition as well as the original production design at every stage.
Integrating the verification management system. Moving from planning what to do, to actually doing requires task definitions, scheduling, and management. Teamcenter provides this functionality for all verification activities to link engineering, manufacturing, procurement, and test to support long lead planning, resource utilization and execution of the verification activities. Verification requirements are linked to supporting documentation for virtual and physical test configurations, test plans, test procedures and test results to enable complete status reporting of the process. This holistic approach ensures efficient usage of resources and provides visibility into the process to ensure that deadlines are met. Requirements can be linked to activities on the verification management schedule as well as to a Work Breakdown Structure for correlation to financial reporting systems; integrating cost, schedule, and technical requirements in a single system.
Additionally, the verification management solution includes a catalyst. This fast track implementation provides best practice models and preconfigured elements for activities such as defining data objects and roles that can be used in automated workflows. The open and configurable software allows you to control the appearance and behavior of the Siemens PLM implementation, whether it is for a comprehensive PLM environment or a standalone verification environment. Deployment accelerators include recommended product selections, network design decisions, configuration procedures, deployment best practices and user training. The verification management catalyst enables you to accelerate the digital transformation of your enterprise. This allows you to improve productivity and achieve greater availability and reliability while reducing the total ownership cost.
Conclusion:
The Verification Management solution in Teamcenter empowers A&D companies to successfully execute their programs on-schedule and on-budget by providing visibility and closed-loop requirement traceability into all activities of the verification process to confirm requirement compliance. With efficient planning, simulation, analysis and test execution in an integrated environment enabling confirmation of requirements achievement, Teamcenter supports program audits and reduces the time and cost of verification that ultimately improves program performance.
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