One way to look at today's aerospace industry is that it is moving into the post-787/A350 era - and few would disagree with Dassault Systemes' aerospace and defence vice-president Michel Tellier when he calls that time a period of "crushing" demands for R&D spending, especially for suppliers to Boeing, Airbus and their tier one partners.

But the new era offers its own relentless challenge - for high production rates. And, as Tellier puts it, meeting rate demands is a "massively capital-intensive" proposition, so programme delays - which means delays to revenue streams - easily bankrupts tier two and three suppliers.

Here, though, the maker of CATIA 3D design software and a whole basket of related work management tools thinks it has an answer. By joining up many DS tools into what it calls a "co-design to target" package, all companies participating in joint product development can get a real-time picture of whether they are on track to meet a programme's performance, weight, cost and production rate specifications.

Meeting rate demands starts in the early design phase, says Tellier, and the traditional practice of periodic design reviews is like steering a ship by occasional throttle blasts to weave around a desired course. But with real-time knowledge, he says: "You don't go off schedule, you don't go overweight - you keep it on!"

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Source: Flight Daily News

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