Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This is a follow-on project to successful ENGAGE and ENGAGE PLUS projects. Aircraft manufacturers around the world are transitioning from traditional design and manufacturing approaches such as integrated product development teams and Lean Production. Information systems, requirements management and knowledge capture are increasingly important across the entire product lifecycle, and particularly in the case of aerospace safety-critical systems. The structure of existing, software-based, product lifecycle management (PLM) and certification systems do not, in general, integrate PLM with requirements management and knowledge capture as a generic model. In addition, they often fail to address the specific needs of the aerospace sector. Cascade Aerospace Inc. is a Canadian corporation specializing in the design, manufacturing and certification of customized modifications to domestic and international third-party aircraft. Although many industries are developing digital systems to manage engineering and manufacturing changes throughout the product lifecycle, engineering data management for businesses such as Cascade has the added complexity of integrating changes from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and managing certification and testing requirements. The previous ENGAGE projects used process mapping techniques to explore the complex stakeholder interactions characteristic of this niche Canadian aerospace business model. In the project that is the subject of this proposal, the researcher will be partnering with Cascade and Marinvent Corporation, a company specializing in aerospace certification management, to develop a software system architecture to support requirements management, knowledge capture and certification processes for the aerospace missionizing business model. The prototype software tool will be piloted on a major modification program at Cascade in order to develop a business case for this model of PLM solution.