In an attempt to accelerate the design process, aerospace and defense companies are reexamining product development’s traditional linear flow from design through manufacturing and sales. To ensure demand-driven innovation and achieve cycle time reductions of 60 to 70 percent, a new product development initiative seeks to create a real-time, global, collaborative environment that fully integrates people, processes and systems.

This initiative stresses strategic portfolio management that closely aligns current and future market demands with product development. Key dependencies and leverage points are outlined early in the process so they can be acted upon quickly. As part of normal workflow, the best ideas are tested and validated against real-world market opportunities.

To accelerate the development of new products that meet or exceed customer expectations, aerospace and defense companies need to address the following focus areas within a new product development initiative:

Program management

 Control and manage program development team complexities and establish performance measurements and milestones to keep projects on track. Enable all product-related teams to work together effectively regardless of any member’s physical location. Establish product configurations that can be managed, tracked and re-used across an entire product lifecycle, as well as across multiple product offerings.

Engineering process management – Synchronize the engineering processes that require participation across the value chain and access to all of the product information users need to get their jobs done. Accelerate product delivery by enabling design teams to seamlessly collaborate with manufacturing teams.

Product development and engineering

Develop systems and technologies that embed market and customer requirements directly into product architectures. Feedback mechanisms should extend into aftermarket and maintenance activities.

Product design

 Create a distributed design environment that supports very large model phase development. Enable designers to access more content and view designs in multiple configurations during model development. Large scale models provide 360-degree views of the product throughout its lifecycle.

A PLM backbone creates a highly productive product development environment that enables designers to map the product throughout its lifecycle, which often extends throughout ongoing maintenance programs. Platform-based design ensures that aerospace and defense companies maximize part and component re-use across programs.