Question: Professor Riedel, what is meant by advanced systems engineering and what makes it different from systems engineering?

Riedel: In the past we haven’t been able to establish systems engineering in such a way as to deliver really good solutions for the combination of product, process and service. Systems engineering works reasonably well for mechatronics and software engineering but often fails in industrial practice because of the complexity of the approach and the organizational structures it requires. Advanced systems engineering (ASE) is designed to address precisely these issues and to better support companies when it comes to implementation.

Question: Does the term ‘advanced’ refer to systems or to engineering?

Riedel: It can be understood as a triangle that brings together the three aspects of advanced systems, systems engineering and advanced engineering. Advanced systems describe increasingly complex and networked market services, systems engineering describes the coordination and structuring of the cross-functional, interdisciplinary development of complex systems, and advanced engineering deals with best practices with regard to methods and tools in engineering, as well as agile approaches and creativity techniques. The aim is to break down domain silos and enable interactive collaboration in both product engineering and production, in other words to achieve a holistic view of the innovation processes.

Question: Are you placing the primary emphasis with ASE on dovetailing product development with production and production planning?

Riedel: Not quite, we are going even further. After all, products and processes are still largely developed in-house. In the case of product-service systems, the service is provided after the start of production, when the product is already on the market. And things that change the product without any physical add-ons, such as big data analytics or product updates over the air, play a role here. The system must be described as a coherent whole, in order to be able to use it in product development, virtual try-out, the digital factory and, most importantly, in the field of service.

Question: And what does that mean in concrete terms?

Riedel: Let’s take Homag and its highly complex custom systems for the woodworking industry as an example. The company has adopted an ASE approach, in order to achieve one hundred percent mapping of the digital twin. However, this twin does not reside in the development department but instead accompanies production virtually. If the owner of the machine wants to use the machine to run a new production program, they can try it out virtually on their system. The digital twin is used as a service during operation.

Question: Implementing systems engineering in development is already a complex task. Are you not merely compounding the complexity by integrating production and service?

Riedel: Of course, the notion of service is an additional dimension but that doesn’t necessarily make things more complicated; it simply brings together those processes that are still segregated today. There must be a single source of truth for the entire system. In other words, the system model must be linked with the service structures when the system is really running. Nowadays, we don’t get the data back from the field so that we can map it to the product and offer additional services. But the product lifecycle doesn’t come to an end when the product is delivered. We need redundancy-free storage of data throughout the entire lifecycle, despite the user having a different view of this data from that of a developer.

Question: In principle, ASE requires that everything should be defined from the outset. Doesn’t that clash with the philosophy of the agile approach?

Riedel: No, I don’t think so. In the model-based approach we have for simulation technology what is known as black boxing. I can create certain components as black boxes with inputs and outputs without having defined them in full detail, either because I don’t yet know the solution or because I’m not interested in it at present. I don’t need to know the internal workings of each black box from the word go. I just know that it has to be there. If you apply this paradigm broadly, you easily get to agility. The only question is whether there are enough description languages that can cope with the various modeling depths in the simulation.

Question: Is ASE model-based by definition or are there other approaches?

Riedel: I’ll answer that with another question: Is there anywhere you can still do without models today? Yes, it definitely has to be model-based, because we would otherwise be unable to achieve coverage of all the phases or the required depth.

Question: What models are required for this? If you want to dovetail product, process and service, surely you have to start with the requirements?

Riedel: Exactly, this is one of the issues that is the subject of intense discussion. Can we achieve this with one data model across the entire lifecycle or do we link models? From my practical experience in industry, I would prefer linked models because a single model would eventually become too much for me. Not only that, I’m also no longer interested in the fine details of the requirements model after a given phase. In order to go into production, I need other models, but it must be possible to link them to each other, in much the same way as the different views in PDM. And when I go out into the field, it is again the case that I no longer need certain details. But I must be able to establish relations in both directions. In other words, I am linking my models but the content doesn’t have to be a permanent part of every version of the model.

Question: Can ASE work in conjunction with external suppliers? Don’t you reveal too much product know-how if all the information is contained in a single model?

Riedel: That’s a very good point, and it brings us to the operational use of such models. Until now, we’ve only talked in the abstract about what they might look like in a perfect world. The management of roles and permissions, which is already a hot topic in the distributed development process, becomes an even greater challenge when the network is extended to cover the users of the product as well.

I clearly don’t want users to see everything, but just the relevant information and structures. Ensuring the management of roles and permissions beyond the current system boundaries is a truly intriguing issue.

Question: Are there any companies that have already implemented ASE right through to service provision?

Riedel: Unfortunately, there are very few due to the fact that there are three major hurdles to overcome. Firstly, there are technical hurdles such as model-based description languages, but these will be overcome at some point. Then there are organizational hurdles within companies. Perhaps these will begin to fall away a little as a result of the coronavirus, because many people realize that we would be much further down the road if we already had connectivity across domains. Companies are not yet organizationally geared up to plan and control product lifecycle support. And then there are the human hurdles. To start with, you have to get engineers onboard in your journey into the next dimension and get them to understand the growing complexity that comes with it. At the moment, I think that the organizational and human hurdles are greater than the technical ones.

Question: What is the focus of the ASE research program at Fraunhofer IAO?

Riedel: We have decided on six areas of study, which we work on in two directions. The first of these areas is model-based system development, including cross-domain aspects such as data analysis, in other words, the extension of current methods. The second is value-stream-oriented product design, i.e. the use of process information from production for product design. For this to succeed, the value stream must be defined at an earlier stage than it is currently. The third area is the evaluation of data from production planning and production using artificial intelligence (AI). And the fourth area also has to do with AI, but in this case, it is about evaluating the large volumes of data from the product engineering process in order to provide product developers with recommendations for best practice. The fifth area deals with system configuration, i.e. how to configure not only the product but also the process and the service, for example in order to be able to assess the impact that changes made to the product may have on the process. The last area we are investigating may be somewhat old-fashioned, but we must have another look at the PLM systems. They are still not in a position to support ASE.

Question: Where, for example, should the product-specific process information be managed? This issue is actually more closely related to MES.

Riedel: We undoubtedly need MES functionality to be integrated into PLM, either via interfaces or by running it on the PLM infrastructure. Assuming that MES and PLM systems were to evolve towards service-oriented architectures, the existence of x different systems wouldn’t be tragic because they would be based on a data repository, and this would ensure that the models were linked and would guarantee their consistency and integrity. However, this runs quite counter to the architectural pattern of today’s PLM systems.

Question: A moment ago, you spoke of ‘two different directions’. What did you mean by that?

Riedel: We have had long discussions with the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the State of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about how we can ensure that the issues are quickly made tangible for local companies. So we set up a mobile lab in which we are using a relatively simple product with a service feature and a production system that can be quickly understood to illustrate the interaction of engineering, production processes and service. The lab is housed in a shipping container, which is currently standing on our premises due to the restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The other direction is to build a similar lab at the Fraunhofer IAO, but this one is oriented more towards research.

Question: What insights can companies expect from this plug-in lab?

Riedel: To start with, they can quickly grasp exactly what is meant by model-based system development or value-stream-oriented product design. The idea is that they can feed their own data into the lab equipment and directly identify the added value. We want to use a simple example to demonstrate to companies how ASE works.

Professor Riedel, thank you very much for talking to us.
(This interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)

About Professor Riedel

Professor Oliver Riedel (born 1965) has been head of the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW) at the University of Stuttgart since November 2016 and is also a director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO). Professor Riedel studied Cybernetic Technology at Stuttgart Technical University, where he completed his doctorate at the Faculty of Engineering Design and Production Engineering. He has been working on the principles and practical application of virtual validation in product development and production for over 25 years. Professor Riedel is married with one grown-up son.

Further information is available at www.iao.fraunhofer.de

Question: Mr. Weimer, you are responsible at Airbus for corporate architecture in Digital Design Manufacturing & Services. Is all this part of PLM?

Weimer: We’ve come a long way to our current understanding of PLM, from product data management to the entirety of the engineering tools we use to support our product development, to the idea of the model-based company. What we call PLM today is really an integrated and model-based approach to design, manufacturing and services. Not only do we describe our products in models, we also have models of our industrial process and the support and service processes. The challenge is to represent the trade-offs across all these disciplines. For example, whenever we make a product change, we need to be able to see how it affects the industrial process and what impact it has on support and service and on my customers – doing this analysis based on models and simulations.

Question: How does Corona affect the PLM strategy and ongoing initiatives?

Weimer: Of course, the Corona crisis affects aviation particularly strongly. This is a dramatic situation for the industry, which is why the industry is focusing on the essentials. But the crisis is also an opportunity for PLM and digital transformation, as I have said elsewhere, because the decline in activity in certain areas reduces the cost of transformation, creating opportunities, and gives us access to resources that may not have been available to us before.

Question: Can the Airbus PLM strategy be described in a few sentences?

Weimer: We have an enormous diversity of around 3,000 tools around the PLM, which means we have extreme complexity and extreme integration problems, which results in processes that are not yet particularly consistent. Where we had a best-of-breed approach for every capability in the past, today we think this complexity reduces innovative strength and is not cost-optimal. Therefore, our current vision is to move more towards integrated platforms, which is why we have entered into several partnerships. For example, we partner with Palantir to bring data analytics and the product digital twin together in the Airbus platform Skywise, making it available to our customers as a product. We have also entered into a strategic partnership with Dassault Systèmes. Our vision is to establish 3DEXPERIENCE as the collaboration platform for digital design, manufacturing and services to move towards more integrated, model-based and data-driven processes. Then there are capabilities for various disciplines orchestrated through 3DEXPERIENCE. This can include proprietary or 3rd party capabilities, e.g. for configuration management, which are not efficiently supported by today’s commercial solutions.

Question: What does the strategic partnership with Dassault Systèmes mean for the other PLM systems in use at Airbus?

Weimer: PLM is a lifelong journey, and over the years there have always been opportunities to work with different partners. For example, Windchill was selected as the PDM platform for the entire Airbus Group at the beginning of 2000 and continues to play an important role. Similarly, we selected Aras more as a niche solution on the PLM periphery to better control creativity in our business. Finally, we develop many process automation tools and solutions internally, e.g. for structural testing, aerodynamics simulation, etc.

Question: How many different PLM architectures are there at Airbus? One for each aircraft program?

Weimer: That would be too much simplified. Every time we launch a new product program, we have the opportunity to invest in innovation and digital process improvements. We started in the 1980s with the A320 program with integrated product data management, then in the 1990s with the A330 / A340 program, we first introduced the 3D digital mock-up in addition to PDM. Then came the A380 in early 2000, where we worked with the 3D model as the master and integrated processes for configuration management. This was followed by A400M, A350, and other developments that went deeper into the journey to model-based and digitally integrated processes. PLM architectures evolve significantly from one program to another to drive our digital transformation, but there are always elements that are reused to leverage our past investment, and to reduce risk for the next program.

Question: Will the process improvements also be fed back into the running programs?

Weimer: We return them to where we can generate added value through the investments. Because the initial investment has already paid for itself on the new program, it is easier to finance retrofits of the capabilities in running programs. In addition, even our legacy aircraft programs still run significant developments, such as the re-engineering in the A320Neo and A330Neo programs, or the current development of the A321XLR, with which we are dramatically changing the range and market positioning. With each new product variant, we have significant development expenses again and can also justify investments in digital transformation and further process improvements.

Question: How far have you progressed with the Group-wide harmonization of PLM architectures?

Weimer: Airbus was founded in 1969 as a kind of association with an integrated product, but this product was developed by four different companies that had different processes and IT systems. We have been an integrated company since the beginning of the millennium and have also made enormous progress in integrating the system landscapes since then. With programs such as the A400M or the A350, there is only one set of processes, methods and tools that is used at all locations, not only in the founding countries but also in the global engineering centers across the globe. And we have now an aligned strategy also across business units driving through a single group-wide digital design, manufacturing, and services transformation program addressing all business lines and product families.

Question: Are the methods of Model-Based Systems Engineering already firmly integrated in the product development process?

Weimer: For many years now, we have had approaches towards MBSE in various areas such as powerplant, fuel, noise, electrical or avionics. What we are still working on is to better and more globally integrate this in order to be able to consistently present the trade-offs between the product as a system, the industrial system and the support and service system. To achieve this, cross-disciplinary cooperation in Model Based Systems Engineering must be improved even further.

Question: How universally is the Digital Twin used today at Airbus?

Weimer: As I said, we offer it as a service via the Skywise platform. Our products have the option of uploading data from operations to the platform, so that we can provide our customers with analytics services for route optimization or maintenance planning optimization, as examples. In addition to the Digital Twin capabilities for our customers, there are also projects in production to calibrate our models and optimally control processes via analytical control procedures. One example is the topic of fasting – there are tens of thousands of fasteners in an aircraft. Using IoT-connected tools, we can prove which elements have been set and with what torque they have been tightened, thus reducing inspection costs.

Question: At Airbus you are also responsible for PLM research. Where are the main focuses in this area?

Weimer: A good example is the topic of 3D printing. We see an enormous potential for 3D-printed components and have therefore had projects in the recent past to make design optimizations. For this purpose, we have developed new capabilities in our partnership with Dassault Systèmes, in order to optimize the shaping of the parts on the one hand and the printing process on the other.

Question: In which PLM topics do you see the aerospace industry ahead and can perhaps serve as a model for other industries?

Weimer: I find it difficult to make a statement on this because it might sound arrogant. My personal conviction is that we have to remain humble and can all still earn from each other. Nevertheless, the aerospace industry certainly has a long history in all topics related to safety and the verifiability of product safety. There are many regulatory requirements where we have to prove very precisely, for example with the help of systems engineering, that our product meets these requirements. And the industry as a whole is deeply collaborating to achieve these safety targets, including the regulators, international governance bodies, etc. Here I see many parallels with autonomous driving in the automotive environment, where there are still no clear regulations and requirements that are internationally standardized.

Question: Do these experiences flow into the projects of the prostep ivip association?

Weimer: Yes, we have, for example, just started a project on the topic of Model Based Verification and Validation on the initiative of colleagues from The Boeing Company. One of the aims of this project is to use simulation models for such verifications. We want to be able to prove that the simulation correctly represents reality in order to avoid physical test set-ups.

Question: Which accents would you like to set as the new spokesman of the association’s board?

Weimer: We have similar challenges in aerospace, automotive and other industries when it comes to optimizing products and production processes. In my opinion, the association is an excellent platform for collaboration, for learning together and defining best practices, especially in the interaction with our supply chains. The idea of collaboration is a passion that I bring with me. The second topic I want to work on is internationalization, because I believe that innovations around our topics are not tied to a geographical region.

Mr. Weimer, thank you very much for the interview.
(The interview was conducted by Michael Wendenburg)

About the person

Dr. Henrik Weimer (1971) has worked in Airbus since 2002 and is currently Senior Manager responsible for the architecture and integration of end-to-end PLM solutions, demand and business planning for PLM, as well as innovation, research and development in these areas. Previously he held various management positions in IT at Daimler AG. Weimer studied computer science and electrical engineering at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and received his doctorate in computer science from Rice University in Houston. Since 2018 he has been a member of the board of the prostep ivip association, which recently appointed him as its spokesman.

Wheelsets have been made in Oberhausen for more than 200 years, although Gutehoffnungshütte Radsatz GmbH was only founded in 1994. Since 2014, the company has been part of the GHH-BONATRANS Group. With its global workforce of 1,700 and sales of over 300 million euros, the group is Europe’s largest manufacturer of wheelsets for all types of rail vehicles. In addition to its two development and production sites in Oberhausen and Bohumín in the Czech Republic, GHH-BONATRANS has a further production site in India and a sales office in Hong Kong.

The 280 employees at the Oberhausen plant primarily develop, manufacture and sell light-rail applications with rubber-sprung resilient wheels for trams around the world, but also wheelsets for heavy-rail applications ranging from underground and metro to high-speed trains and railway construction equipment. The staff at the Czech sister company BONATRANS are responsible for developing and producing wheelsets with solid wheels for conventional trains, high-speed trains, locomotives and freight cars. Their own hot forming facilities also allow them to supply forged parts for wheels and shafts, which are machined in Oberhausen and fitted in the wheelsets.

Every year, GHH-Radsatz supplies around 6,000 wheelsets and 40,000 wheels to rail vehicle manufacturers such as Alstom, Bombardier, Stadler, Skoda and Siemens as well as to rail operators. According to Dr. Sven Jenne, Director of Engineering and Research & Development in Oberhausen, Germany, around half of the business is in the aftermarket segment, since wheels are wearing parts. “There is an extremely large range of variants. This is because wheels and wheelsets have to be tailored to each vehicle project and adapted to the infrastructure. This is also our strength, because otherwise we would not be able to assert ourselves in the highly competitive market against competitors from Eastern Europe and increasingly also from China.”

Increasing effort invested in documentation

Compared to solid wheels, the amount of engineering effort needed to adapt the rubber-sprung tram wheels is greater, as their design is more complex. A V-shaped rubber ring between the wheel body and the tire ensures greater ride comfort. Design engineers must therefore always achieve a balance between strength, cushioning and mountability of the wheels. And Jenne explains that the V-shaped cushioning is unique to GHH-Radsatz. “Our GHH® V60 is the most widely used rubber-sprung resilient wheel in Europe.”

Every year, the company handles many concurrent projects, each of which can last between six and 24 months. The aim is to improve punctual delivery by detecting discrepancies in good time. Design engineers are under great time pressure, especially for new vehicle projects, as the time between order placement and delivery is becoming ever shorter, while delivery times for long-running items such as the forged parts are often beyond their control.

At the same time, the complexity of the projects and the amount of documentation needed are growing. Jenne: “Wheelsets are safety-relevant components, and the requirements with regard to traceability and also the volume of documents for each project and order have increased significantly in recent years.” The documents must be kept for 30 years or more because wheelsets have very long lifecycles and are constantly being reordered.

Time-consuming information retrieval

The file-based archive system made it increasingly difficult for users and company managers to keep track of the status of projects and, in the case of aftermarket projects, to trace which documents were actually valid. “Our staff spends a lot of time hunting down and collating information. That’s why we want to make it accessible to all those involved, regardless of the archive systems used in the individual departments, and in the process firm up the ‘memory’ of the company,” says Jenne, explaining the purpose of the PDM project.

In consultation with its Czech sister company, GHH-Radsatz decided to replace the archive system with a database-driven product data management system. When they embarked on the search for a suitable solution, however, it soon became apparent that the company was not in a position to get a clear picture of the multitude of solutions on offer and to assess their capabilities.

Jenne: “At times, we had the impression that we were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as we initially only needed part of the functionality offered by PDM.” That’s why PROSTEP was called in as a vendor-independent helper. The company’s PLM consultants not only know the systems and the vendors, but also bring along a wealth of experience from other selection projects.

As a first step, PROSTEP supported the project team in completing the requirements, structuring them clearly and creating a proper requirements specification. One of the most important requirements was the interaction with the Infor Smart Office M3 ERP system, which is currently critical for the creation of articles and BOMs and for order processing, and is intended to remain so. It was also important for the PDM system to offer a good interface to the SolidWorks design system, which is used in Oberhausen on 18 CAD workstations, and it should also be possible to connect it to the CAQ solution. In addition to the system’s integration capabilities, GHH-Radsatz also attaches great importance to simple system administration and the ability to further develop it in-house without the need for programming.

Benchmarking with three system vendors

Even though the first priority is to connect the existing systems and make information more readily available, the company has more far-reaching plans that PROSTEP also took into consideration when selecting the system. For example, the engineering change process, which is currently still entirely paper-based, is to be mapped to an electronic workflow. Jenne would also like to see greater digitalization of the entire order flow from the request for quotation, through design, material procurement and production, right up to dispatch and invoicing. This would be done by parallelizing certain tasks by something akin to PDM-driven project management. It would also help management to monitor the status of the projects and respond to discrepancies more rapidly.

In a professional selection process with transparent parameters, PROSTEP initially selected five candidates from a total of ten potential vendors. These were then invited to submit an offer. After the offers had been evaluated and discussions had taken place with the vendors, three candidates were shortlisted and were given the opportunity to demonstrate their programs on the basis of the use cases engineering change and order processing. This methodical approach to system selection ensured that the results were comparable. “We were always able to explain to management how we came to our decision,” explains Jenne.

Ultimately, the choice fell on the PRO.FILE software from PROCAD, although Jenne stresses that all three suppliers made a very good impression. The decisive factor was not only better value for money in terms of the costs of purchasing, rolling out and maintaining the software, but also the ease of configuration. “I was very impressed with how easily my colleagues were able to program, or rather configure, some wonderful things. This gives me confidence that we will easily be able to extend the solution in the future.”

The consulting service paid off

GHH-Radsatz spent about 10 to 15 percent of its total budget (excluding internal expenses) on consulting. According to Jenne, this was a wise investment because the company is confident that it has taken a decision that is sustainable in the long term. He would particularly recommend external consulting to smaller companies that are less familiar with PDM. “Thanks to the collaboration with PROSTEP, the vendors immediately realized that we knew what we were talking about. And I have the feeling that the consultants’ knowledge of the market also had a positive impact on the price negotiations.”

The company will begin rolling out the system this March. Rollout will be based on an existing prototype that PROCAD set up last year and which essentially maps all the planned functions including change management and order workflow. However, implementation of the latter is not planned until next year in order not to overburden users. The plan is to initially enable CAD data and document management with read access to ERP and CAQ systems. Before this can happen, however, large amounts of existing data from the various file archive structures will have to be migrated. Jenne explains: “We have already held a large number of workshops with PROCAD and PROSTEP on this aspect.”

In the long term, he expects the use of PDM to bring considerable benefits. Users will be more productive because they will spend less time searching for information. Processes will be accelerated by working in parallel, which will reduce throughput times. In addition, the status of projects will become more transparent, so that management can intervene more rapidly in the event of delays.