Aerospace manufacturing is an industry that relies on strict standards. Airplane Components must be safe and reliable to ensure the safety of passengers and crew.
Building an aircraft requires a vast network of companies with specialized skills and facilities. Aerospace manufacturers must rely on quality management solutions that improve business processes and build streamlined workflows to meet these requirements.
Traceability
A traceability system can help aerospace manufacturing services create quality, safe products compliant with industry standards and regulations. This software-based approach allows companies to manage their operations with better accuracy and efficiency by ensuring all requirements are recorded.
Whether designing a new product or working on an existing one, implementing traceability is critical for success. Traceability provides visibility into the process from a forward and backward perspective, making pinpointing the source of defects easier.
In addition to supporting compliance, traceability is also necessary for facilitating improved agility in the development process. Delays caused by locating required documentation or realizing a gap in the data can result in equipment downtime, which can cost companies money and customer satisfaction. With traceability, these delays can be avoided with a more streamlined workflow and real-time information on hand. With this, engineers can quickly identify a problem with the assembly or design and make changes accordingly.
Design for Manufacture
Aerospace companies, like EEI, must manage complex supply chain risks, including price increases, production delays, political unrest, and natural disasters. They also have to meet regulatory requirements such as export controls.
Managing these issues requires a highly skilled workforce and strong partnerships. It also requires advanced technology to ensure the quality of aerospace components and to keep production costs low.
One way to reduce manufacturing costs is to use design for manufacture (DFM). DFM uses engineering methodologies to improve product designs for assembly and manufacture. It helps manufacturers eliminate mistakes that result in costly production errors and rework.
Quality Management
Aerospace manufacturing is a safety-critical industry, producing components to build and fly airplanes and spaceships. As such, quality standards must be incredibly high, with rigorous inspections and testing. This includes non-destructive tests (NDT) like X-rays, ultrasound, and magnetic particle inspection that detect defects in aerospace components before they can be installed on aircraft.
Implementing a quality management system (QMS) can help companies improve product quality and increase productivity by creating streamlined processes and workflows. A QMS can also help manufacturers comply with regulations of the aerospace industry’s standard quality management system requirements.
Using an advanced MES solution can help aerospace OEMs reduce work-in-progress inventory, disappointed customers, and costly delays due to nonconformances by reporting and resolving them on time. It can also help manufacturers increase compliance with regulatory requirements such as AS 9100 by enabling them to collect, track, and control live data from manufacturing operations.