Helping a global aerospace manufacturer take off

Client: A global leader in aerospace manufacturing

Industry: Manufacturing

Client Challenge: The company’s innovation abilities and time to market were being hampered by multiple disparate, legacy PLM and engineering applications, which had limited analytical and cross-integration capabilities

Solution: The Capgemini team helped the client develop a comprehensive program of PLM and engineering applications modernization and migration strategies

Benefits:

• Heightened innovation capabilities and reduced cost of development
• Quicker time to market and reduced costs overall
• Reduction in overall standard part request process cycle times
• Enabling of release on demand and faster deployments
• Effective data management and traceability

The company is one of the world’s leaders in the design, manufacture, and delivery of aerospace products and services. It was looking to breathe new life into its aging product life cycle (PLM) and engineering IT portfolio, which was becoming increasingly expensive to operate. The current PLM program was leveraging multiple PLM systems built on legacy platforms and this was negatively impacting aircraft design and development. The company was also grappling with legacy engineering applications that were not meeting the changing needs of the business. To solve these issues, the company was seeking a partner who could deliver digital continuity across concept, design, build, manufacture, and sales support functions, along with improving innovation and accelerating time to market overall.

High-flying application modernization and migration services with ADMnext

The company approached Capgemini to resolve all the above issues and serve as its dedicated build-to-run partner. The Capgemini team brought everything ADMnext has to offer here with continuous delivery to the business and ensured the digital continuity and capacity necessary to drive innovation. Capgemini was central in the modernization of PLM applications. This covered turnkey solutions such as the introduction of a DevOps factory, the development of a configuration and change management solution, and the retirement of legacy PLM suites for leading commercial aircraft.

The partners worked collaboratively to industrialize the development of processes and tools with expertise in the 3D Experience PLM platform (a Dassault product). This is a comprehensive CI/CD framework for feeding data from legacy PLM systems and enhancing business capabilities by implementing standard part management, process harmonization, and data migration. Capgemini is helping the company guarantee continuous value delivery to the business through shortened cycles and closer business and IT collaboration leveraging The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®). Capgemini is also involved in the development of TDM systems and the driving of E2E test campaigns for the company’s new single-aisle PLM system that will replace existing diverse legacy PLM systems.

Overall, the Capgemini team’s strategic efforts brought the following benefits:

• Reduction in overall standard part request process cycle time
• Increased collaboration and reusability through a comprehensive PLM solution
• Innovative next-gen aircraft design with a model-based system engineering approach within the 3D Experience PLM platform
• Increased delivery efficiency of all teams working on the company’s “One Platform” with 3D Experience Factory’s automated solutions
• Optimized development costs with a joint move to cloud strategy and the implementation of microservices
• Effective data management, traceability, and accelerated time to market for single aisle aircraft development with lean PLM implementation.

Blue skies ahead

The company is keen to expand upon all of these developments with the continuation of operational excellence and delivery. This will come in the form of support for various new design and development programs during the company’s digital journey, which includes MBSE programs and digital twin implementation for industrial systems.