Making The Virtual Enterprise A Reality With Windchill

Since its launch in 1990 by namesake parent corporations, BMW Rolls-Royce AeroEngines (BMW RR) has been on a rapid ascent as the global leader in the mid-range aircraft engine industry, with bookings of 2.5B DM (1.4B USD) and 2,000 employees. BMW RR delivers engines for executive jets and 100-passenger aircraft to elite customers like Boeing Douglas, British Aerospace, Bombardier, and Gulfstream. To maintain market leadership with the BR700 series engines, BMW RR relies upon solutions that accelerate product delivery without increasing corporate liability in disparate technologies. They need robust solutions that deploy quickly to keep pace with their business goals, yet scale easily to meet their enterprise-wide initiatives.

To support these initiatives, BMW RR has selected Parametric Technology Corporation's Windchill Factor! e-Series as the technology of choice for their Integrated Product Development (IPD) environment because it uniquely meets their demanding product information needs. Productive work success within the core AeroEngine development business has encouraged BMW RR to deploy Windchill as the product collaboration backbone of their IPD strategy throughout the entire engine development process.

The business of developing aircraft engines is demanding work. In fact, it can take longer to develop the engine than the rest of the airplane. To retain their competitive edge, BMW RR needs to work with greater efficiency and more accuracy throughout the engine's entire development process. Critical decisions require cross-functional and cross-departmental participation, and every delay can be costly. Studies indicate that engineers spend up to 30 percent of their time accessing information for critical product decisions where mistakes are more costly still.

As challenging as the mission may be, BMW RR directly targets such problems by leveraging Windchill to support solutions in the IPD strategy. IPD is scheduled as a three-year program to deliver optimal information management and business process re-engineering to achieve time-to-market advantages and enable tighter coordination with customer (aircraft) schedules. Jim Broughton (IPD Project Leader) says, "We believe an enterprise technology is best deployed incrementally to learn from what we achieve at every milestone." With reference to other companies and their experiences with other approaches Broughton adds, "their experiences show us that it's simply too difficult to lay out a massive object model for company-wide deployment before getting results. We just couldn't wait that long."

The implementation of Windchill to the IPD requirements for the first phase took four months with two dedicated implementation engineers and key support staff. Integration partner CSC Ploenzke continues to work in tandem with PTC's Professional Services Organization (PSO) to deliver product and process automation solutions toward the multi-phase, three-year IPD plan.

The Windchill IPD environment was released into the core engine development process in Q1 1999. Windchill provides the product collaboration backbone throughout cross-functional departments that comprise the engine program. Traditional business processes can now be accelerated to the pace of the Web by the extensible architecture that Windchill provides.

As a simple example, a collection of critical documents and information called a "scheme folder" is shared across teams and locations to coordinate important decisions and approvals through the engine program. This is a non-trivial part of the business because systems that comprise a jet engine are extremely complex and require extensive collaboration to align the interfaces between various systems and components. There is no room for error.

This information is captured in an electronic "scheme folder" object using Windchill technology. This electronic container now digitally replaces the traditional folder as well as its associated business processes while adding several key advantages. Once electronic, it no longer needs to be routed through manual mail systems to reach departments and locations on the critical path of the decision making process. In fact, key participants are automatically notified as the electronic folder passes through its lifecycle in the enterprise. Every item in the "virtual" folder is managed reliably in the secure data management system and is accessible by authorized users in various departments and locations using their existing Web infrastructure. Objects in the folder object can be processed in parallel, making the process more efficient. Managers can observe the progress of schemes and their contents for scheduling directly from their desktops.

Decision-makers can now contribute to the engine process more efficiently than ever. When a step in the process is completed, the people who need to know are notified automatically by Windchill, and subsequent steps are initiated. This eliminates unnecessary latency throughout the process. Broughton notes that "there has been a noticeable quality boost" in addition to the increase in process efficiency.

Today, Windchill makes it possible to accelerate these and other business practices in a more efficient, more competitive business environment. Having captured virtually all of their engine information in digital form already, BMW RR is currently implementing greater levels of business process automation using Windchill Workflow capabilities. In addition IPD includes mid-term plans to incorporate the supply chain via their corporate Web infrastructure. Over the long term the entire aircraft engine program will be supported upon a digital "virtual" engine model.

BMW RR AeroEngines is a valued Windchill partner and a member of the Windchill Board of Customer Advisors (BOCA).