Browsing by Author "Bamforth, Philip"

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    Challenges and benefits of digital workflow implementation in aerospace manufacturing engineering
    (Elsevier, 2017-05-09) Rojo Abollado, Jaime; Shehab, Essam; Bamforth, Philip
    Companies who operate in highly regulated industries have further challenges to the usual competition, continuous cost reduction and product development challenges. To address these requirements companies optimise their business processes and change their applications and information systems to support their evolving way of doing business. Workflow management technology eases the achievement of these necessities by providing methodologies, software and tools to support business process modelling, reengineering and workflow automation. Business process mapping is necessary in order to capture business processes as workflow specifications. Then, these systems allow business process reengineering, helping the optimisation of specified processes, and workflow automation, in order to generate a lean digital workflow from the specifications. There are many opportunities to benefit from this technology in aerospace applications, however these bring several implementation challenges in large global companies operating in multiple markets and need to be carefully managed. This research provides an overview of the benefits that digital workflows implementation can potentially bring to aerospace companies, together with a detailed description of significant challenges, regarding both the implementation of digital workflows and risks related to human factors. The study increases industry awareness on the importance of driving a digital transformation through implementing digital workflows, and where to start this implementation in a manufacturing business, highlighting the success factors.
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    Model-based enterprise framework for aerospace manufacturing engineering
    (IOS, 2019-10-12) Shehab, Essam; Schuler, Margaux; Bamforth, Philip; Goher, Kamran
    In the context of aerospace digital transformation, gaining and maintaining competitive advantage has led aerospace manufacturers to change how product definition is communicated. Model-Based Definition (MBD) and Enterprise (MBE) are the next generations of product definition that aim to move from 2D drawings to a full 3D digital model. Even though traditional engineering drawings still play an essential role in product development, developing an MBE today, for an aerospace company, deals primarily with its fundamentals: how significant benefits are? This work focuses on defining the MBE value stream framework and evaluating the potential improvements that can be realised for MBE within an aerospace manufacturing engineering (ME) context. To achieve this aim, a methodological triangulation has been adopted through the framework. Based on a ME business case and value stream case study, findings suggest a significant reduction of manufacturing lead-time and cost as well as an improved quality of both the product and the process, resulting in less rework. The developed framework and analysis method have been successfully applied and validated to two different aerospace ME processes. Based on a data-driven approach, it proposes a reliable evaluation of potential improvements for MBE. Successful implementation of the MBE concept relies on maximising its potential benefits. Hence, this industrial research project and its key findings contribute to the development of a strategy for implementing MBE within the aerospace manufacturing company to enable a lean and efficient consumption of product definition.