Dutch aerospace manufacturer Aeronamic is extending its use of Aras product lifecycle management technology into manufacturing engineering, introducing software designed to maintain traceability between product designs and the information required to manufacture them.
The company has adopted the Aras Digital Manufacturing Engineering accelerator, which connects engineering and manufacturing bills of materials within its existing Aras Innovator environment.
The development builds on a relationship that began in 2012, when Aeronamic selected Aras Innovator to replace fragmented information arrangements involving spreadsheets, databases, paper records and disconnected software.
Aeronamic develops, manufactures, tests and maintains complex turbomachinery, motor-driven systems and precision components for the aerospace industry. Its programmes include work associated with Airbus, Boeing, Gulfstream and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Manufacturing these products involves maintaining accurate information about components, assemblies, specifications and approved revisions. Changes to an engineering design can affect several manufacturing activities, particularly where parts require specialist machining, inspection or assembly.
The relationship between design information and production planning is managed through different representations of a product. An engineering bill of materials, or EBOM, describes the components and assemblies required by the engineering definition.
A manufacturing bill of materials, or MBOM, organises those components according to the way the product will be manufactured. It may reflect the production sequence, assembly stages and requirements specific to the facility carrying out the work.
These structures can differ without either being incorrect. Engineering may describe components according to their position within a functional assembly, while manufacturing needs to determine when those components are introduced into production and how they move between operations.
A revised component specification can therefore affect more than one engineering record. Production planners may need to examine tooling, assembly instructions, material requirements and inspections before the revised design can be introduced.
Where engineering and manufacturing structures are maintained separately, information about a change may require manual comparison or transfer between systems. Differences can arise if the manufacturing definition does not reflect the latest approved engineering revision.
Aras Digital Manufacturing Engineering is designed to preserve governed relationships between EBOMs and MBOMs. It allows manufacturing structures to be derived from engineering information or developed independently while retaining controlled links to the relevant product definition.
These links allow a change to be examined across related engineering and manufacturing records. The software is intended to make the consequences of engineering revisions easier to trace without requiring every manufacturing structure to follow the same arrangement as the original design.
That flexibility is important where products are manufactured at several sites. Individual facilities may use different machinery, tooling or production sequences, even when they are working from a common engineering definition.
A manufacturing structure appropriate to one location may not correspond exactly to the arrangements used at another. Maintaining plant-specific information within a governed system allows those differences to be recorded without losing the relationship to the approved product design.
Aeronamic already operates a common Aras-based product data environment connected to multiple enterprise resource planning systems across its business units.
The existing platform supports engineering, quality management, maintenance processes, qualifications management and broader product data governance. Its expansion into manufacturing engineering builds on those established capabilities rather than creating Aeronamic's first digital product information system.
Product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning systems perform different functions. The former commonly manages product definitions, revisions and engineering records, while the latter supports activities such as purchasing, inventory, manufacturing orders and business operations.
Information exchanged between these systems must be identified consistently. A product revision may affect material requirements or manufacturing arrangements, but changes to an engineering document should not automatically alter an active production order without the necessary engineering and operational review.
The new accelerator is intended to improve the information available during that assessment. Maintaining the relationship between engineering and manufacturing definitions allows teams to identify which production structures may be affected by a proposed change.
The consequences still depend on the nature of the revision. A change to a component's dimensions may require different tooling or inspection arrangements, while a change to a drawing note may have little effect on the physical manufacturing process.
Engineering teams must therefore interpret the technical change before deciding which manufacturing records and operations need to be updated. Software traceability provides information about the relationships involved but does not replace the assessment.
Aerospace manufacturing adds requirements for configuration control and records demonstrating conformity with approved specifications. Product variants, customer requirements and qualification conditions can all influence the manufacturing information associated with an assembly.
When a component is revised, the manufacturer must determine which product configurations are affected and how the change should be introduced into production. Existing stock, work in progress and completed assemblies may require different treatment according to the approved change arrangements.
The ability to trace information between engineering and manufacturing can support this decision-making. It also provides a route for maintaining records showing how a manufacturing definition relates to the engineering configuration applicable to a product.
Ronny Blaauwgeers, Director Manufacturing Engineering at Aeronamic, said the company's relationship with Aras had developed through successive improvements in its digital information systems. The new accelerator extends that work into the preparation and management of manufacturing product structures.
Aras identifies Aeronamic as the first European customer to subscribe to the Digital Manufacturing Engineering accelerator. That status concerns the newly introduced software product, not Aeronamic's earlier adoption of Aras Innovator.
The company's established implementation provides a foundation for the latest development. Engineering data are already managed within the Aras environment, while connections to several enterprise systems support the broader exchange of information.
Aeronamic intends to explore more advanced manufacturing process planning and deeper integration between product lifecycle management and enterprise systems. It is also examining additional digital manufacturing capabilities and possible future applications of artificial intelligence.
Those activities remain development objectives rather than completed deployments. The companies have not published measured reductions in production scrap, engineering change lead times or manufacturing costs arising from the new accelerator.
Its immediate function is to maintain more consistent relationships between approved engineering information and the manufacturing structures used to produce complex aerospace equipment.
As Aeronamic introduces the accelerator, the extent of its operational contribution will depend on how the software is configured, which manufacturing activities are included and how the resulting information is incorporated into established engineering and production procedures.
