Product Life-Cycle Management
Plexus Planning gathers and manipulates all of the relevant knowledge for an engineering development, in order to optimise the product development process and provide a complete Product Life-Cycle Management environment. It combines data from ERP, PLM, BPM and other IT systems with the knowledge of key project workers and developers, into a single management system.
The Plexus solution for PLM in aerospace is described in an article in the Feburary 2012 edition of Aerospace Manufacturing
Elicit the product development process
A series of Process Elicitation Workshops is used to systematically build a robust model of the whole design process, taking inputs from possibly hundreds of subject matter experts in the most efficient manner. This model immediately provides the information to improve the organisation’s capabilities and plans for New Product Introductions (NPI) and safeguards this for the next generation of engineers, architects etc throughout the life-cycle of the project.
For example, the US Navy’s Ship Design Process Model was largely constructed during organised workshops for the naval architect community with international participation
Understand System Design Dependencies
Capturing the information flows between participants of different disciplines and design/make teams is an effective surrogate and framework to capture the major physical interactions of the product. This helps optimise the design holistically and also helps with analysis of the impact of change.
Interactions and dependencies are shown graphically, which allows for easy understanding, review and changes.
Improve Collaboration and Organisation
Knowing how you are connected upstream and downstream improves collaboration and teamwork and emergent organisation. The very process of building the model, annotating it, and publishing it, forces crucial social interactions that make the organization leverage its tacit knowledge and improve the way it develops its products. This yields better, more mature products that reach service quicker with much less rework.
Seeing the information flows and understanding the dependency structures provides the essential information required by executives responsible for the design and management of their organisation.
Train the Next Generation
The Plexus model defines the whole design process. It also becomes the context for referencing design templates, lessons learnt and other knowledge. It can be continuously critiqued, annotated and improved.
Drive Investment in People, Plant and Tools, Based on Return On Investment (ROI)
Any investment must be made in the context of the process: changing it, resourcing it and speeding it up. The Plexus model gives the context and allows investment to target bottlenecks on the critical path and quantify improvements for rival investments in terms of cost, lead-time and risk (or quality).
Use to Accelerate and De-risk NPI through Fast Generation of Integrated Plans
The Plexus model of the design process should be used as the starting point for planning NPI projects. The logic (scope and process), duration, constraints and resource data can be made relevant to the specific NPI project. Plexus can then automate production of the schedule that benefits from organizational knowledge continuously maintained.
Supply chain process view – how the engineer sees it:
