A new approach to Weight Management

Luisa Rovera ICT - Simulation Data Management, CAE & CFD

2013 Altair Technology Conference

Turin, April 24th 2013

ABSTRACT

A proper Weight & Balance management is a must for AgustaWestland, as it can identify areas where it is possible to save empty weight to improve helicopter pay load capacity and it can trace potential weight increments that might lead to customers’ claims.

In terms of technology, two main applications were delivered to foster AW Weight & Balance management process:

Weight Assistant: to extract advanced weight information from CAD environment.

Weight Analytics: to empower the Engineers and Executives to make better and faster decisions by managing the entire Weight & Balance process

Weight Assistant, an integrated CATIA V5 application to promote AW methodologies standardization; this application performs a realistic weight prediction and guarantees repeatability over time and user independence, thanks to an unambiguous classification of weight calculation rules per components and Departments.

Furthermore, the automatic calculation of main aircraft consumables (sealant, paint ...) contribution has been implemented.

Weight Analytics, openly architected and highly configurable tool, allows to visualize, analyse and predict W&B at any point in time during the entire Product Life Cycle, and streamline time consuming repetitive tasks associated with data consolidation.

This application reduces the time requested to asses Weight & Balance and it improves both quality and robustness with integrated, transparent and standardized automation to consolidate data sources combined with best-in-class methods in Business Analytics.

The approach of Weight Analytics supplies a common and integrated environment for the management and monitoring of the product weight since the very first phases of the product concept development: indeed Weight Analytics architecture is grounded on a functional view approach, a way to manage, coordinate and consolidate inputs to the design process coming from a number of stakeholders, both internal or suppliers.

Weight Analytics and the Product Life Cycle

“AgustaWestland Weight Analytics” (AWWA) supports W&B engineering all over the phases of product life cycle by managing and tracing BOMs and calculation with different product views:

• during Concept & Feasibility, W&B is supporting the General Design & Architecture functions with functional W&B studies at product level and system level, W&B data are modified without any change control;

• during Design & Development W&B engineering is managing both, the functional and the physical product structure, with change control;

• during Serial Program phase, W&B engineering is tracing the physical product structure, with change control.

Main Phases of the Weight & Balance Process

• The management of mass data will be based on "Target Setting" and "Target Monitor" logic, throughout all stages of development.

• Typically a new project starts identifying a product as a reference • From this reference we start to identify the content of the new product, according to its requirements by the

management of the "carry-over" parts and new specific parts.

Reference Baseline

Baseline Update

Mass Targets

Current Design of the New Prd

Struttura

Sistemi

Potenza

Comfort

Sicurezz

a

Finizioni

0 20 40 60 80 100

84.

3

18.

5

17.

5

8.7

23.

6

63.

6

27.4 27.4

38.6

34.6

46.945

Review1 Review2

Baseline Target Current

25

32

37

BL PR1 PR2

ECR/ECO

ECR/ECO

ECR/ECO

Sis 1

Sis 2

Sis 3

Sis 4

Sis 5

W&B

Reference

Target

Calculated Estimated

Weighed

Main Phases of the Weight & Balance Process

Weight evolution management:

prediction, calculation, reconciliation, weighting:

Continuous weight verification, amendment and alert considering:

– accurate target weight definition

– designed parts calculated weight verification

– calculated weight vs. target weight comparison

– actual weight vs. calculated weight reconciliation

– actual weight conformity

Weight Management in the lifecycle and

contractual requirements compliance, providing:

H/C Weight prediction

Helicopter weight aggregation

(Breakdown per P/N, per military codes, material )

Within the engineering process of a new product, the current status

of development is measured both against the baseline weight and

the target weight. The baseline weight changes along the

development every time a change occurs.

The engineering process of new parts articulates along several

revisions, trials and errors, which involve each single component of

the EBOM. AWWA keeps always track of such a changing

framework and returns the weight manager the exact current

position of the engineering process, detailed along all the EBOM

items.

For each item the weight manager can recognize the current

weight, the level of accuracy of the data CoG, inertias and the

history of revisions. That way he can always perform a detailed and

reliable review and analysis to plan how to move forward.

Weight Assistant: Calculation Engine into Catia V5

Based on the classification of the currently adopted weight calculation rules per

relevant Components of each Department, Weight Assistant is

an integrated CATIA V5 application developed to:

DEP

AR

TMEN

T :

AIR

FRA

ME

SYST

EM

COMPONENT CALCULATION

CATEGORY

Angular,

bracket METALLIC

Firewall

Grid

Cowling skin Composite

Seal MANUAL

INPUT Other (to be

spec.)

Promote AgustaWestland design methodologies standardization

Guarantee repeatability over time and user independence

To predict the most accurate and realistic weight

during the product development phase, an easy

way to extract the contribution of main

consumables has been implemented.

Weight Assistant: Calculation Engine into Catia V5

Weight Analytics and Functional Views • The “view” is a representation of the product composition, where all the components are managed and grouped

into different hierarchical levels accordingly to aggregation rules.

• Each product can be represented according different logics and rules, corresponding to different typology of

structures.

• The functional structure is a unifying element between the different views of all the experts involved in the

development process, and frequently corresponds to the vision of the top management.

Engineering View

Typical View of designers and

technicians, defined accordingly functional

subsystems, tied to CAD tools and

reported in the PLM

Manufacturing View

Very flat View of the product, directly linked with the

workflow across the manufacturing lines and tooling units in

the plants.

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1990

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OI1

r24

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r24

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r24

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r5

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Dis 1 Dis 3

Dis 6 Dis 4

Dis 5

Dis 2 Dis 7 Dis 8

1

2

1

2

AWWA Functional

Views Functional

Views

Engineering

Manufacturing

SAWE Functional View example • The Society of Allied Weight Engineers is an international organization whose purpose is to promote the recognition of

Weight Engineering as a specialized branch of engineering. The Society is organized into 22 chapters with members from across the United States, Europe, United Kingdom, and Canada.

• The Society offers to members and industry a medium for the pooling and exchange of data and experience at local and regional levels, fostering a higher degree of efficiency in mass properties engineering topics.

The SAWE View

22

Page

1288 Row

4836 Column

PART NUMBER

ATA100 Functional View example

W&B Process and Analytics

• Quick, reliable and current update of product weight status.

• Powerful BA tools to analyze and compare BOM composition and attributes, to support decisions on how to move forward and minimize risk.

• Based on the functional-view approach, it offers a way to manage, coordinate and consolidate inputs to the design process coming from a number of stakeholders, both internal or suppliers.

• The Weight Analytics solution provides high data consistency and transparency, standardization and

automation of workflows, enhanced tools to support analysis and decision-making, leveraging best-in-class

methods from the Business Analytics world.

W&B Analytics Report Example

Advantages from the AWWA System

• Empowerment of qualified workforce

– AWWA relieves engineers from data retrieval recurrent tasks and bring them back to data analysis and design intensive activities, which return a significantly higher added value to process and product quality.

• User’s rights management

– AWWA allows to identify and track process and data owners, in order to easily clearify responsibilities and fairly deal with possible conflicts.

• User’s role management

– AWWA solution offer different views and accesses for different users, to be modeled according the company extended (e.g. including suppliers) organization structure. This is especially crucial where strict confidentiality rules apply by authorities’ or customers’ request.

• Enhanced prediction capacity and risk management

– AWWA offers managers the possibility to foresee the impact of changes occurring in the future, to perform what if analysis, and eventually cut the risk factors.

Advantages from the AWWA System

• Consistency and stability of information

– AWWA technology provides high data consistency and transparency, standardization and automation of workflows, across distributed data repositories and process owners.

• Standard and regular reporting

– AWWA enables a protocol of standard and regular reporting - targeted to different recipients across the company’s organization infrastructure.

• Advanced analytics

– AWWA provides sophisticated calculations, analysis and KPIs that are performed quickly automatically by the system.

• Interface between PLM, ERP and early design phases

– AWWA provides concept engineers and architects an effective toolkit to quickly and reliably manage early design phases and streamline the evaluation/feasibility studies that end to the detailed design stage.