Challenge of the Aerospace Industry
The Aerospace Industry have in the recent years, been driven by the internationalization of enterprises and the quality of aviation services have shown steady growth and despite the decrease in activities due to Covid-19 the growth is expected to be steady in the next 20 years. This fact combined with the environmental challenge and need for being more fuel-efficient bring the demands for a change in design of current aircraft models and a huge investment in new materials and new designs is increasing rapidly, not to talk about new more efficient models to meet the growing populations.
The fact that each part of an aero plane often is very expensive and include extensive demands for documentation of quality and overall traceability. Adding to this there is a high complexity and extensive quality requirements which makes the cost of development very high. In previous years there was a long ROI possible due to the long lifetime of each plane after design and the time to marked was not so much under pressure as today.
The new situation demands for a fast time to marked model with a smooth and flexible design phase and for the industry now start to look at the automotive sector to adapt the proven quality processes. This new situation makes the processes and parts even more complex as using new designs and new materials also potentially lead to more mistakes or design changes during the lifetime of a model. This combined with the fact that lifetime of a model is getting shorter do the companies need to address this issue and review their quality systems. As the cost of doing mistakes or too many undocumented tests can be very high, and without having the correct system to document and drive the results the Cost of Poor Quality can get too high.
When we in addition to the above, add the fact that aircraft industry historical have been very paper or excel based and often, using homegrown solutions do that of course bring a huge challenge to the industry, and the result of raising demands and standalone solutions is not necessarily the best cocktail for being fast and agile in new development.
Realizing these facts have there in the resent years been made a lot of joint efforts in the industry to create new standards for both production and quality solutions such as machine learning technologies. Aircraft manufacturers are using machine learning technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the safety and quality of aircraft and increase production efficiency. Machine learning algorithms collect data from machine-to-machine (M2M), machine-to-human (MHI) and human-to-machine (HMI) interfaces and use data analysis to drive effective decision-making. These technologies can optimize manufacturing operations and reduce costs. For example, machine learning and data analysis are used to identify faults in the engine, thereby increasing the service life of components and reducing maintenance. To support these trends there is a need of new IT solutions for quality. The future quality systems need to be integrated in the overall IT landscape to cover the complete lifecycle of a product from development to final component or aircraft. The solution needs to be flexible and adaptable without compromising conformity with industry standards both for usage and security.
The risk for the aerospace companies is of course that the Total Cost of Quality will increase rapidly if this is not taken care of by a proven and stable solution.
Future-proof with QDA
With our software solution QDA, we have been supporting our customers for more than 30 years in the area of quality management both in the Production and Laboratory. We work closely with our customers to find the optimal solution for them, including compliance with prescribed standards and being adaptable to new and upcoming standards. QDA have been working with some of the biggest OEMs and Suppliers within the aerospace industry for more than a decade and gained a huge expertise in optimizing the processes and reduce cost.
Our quality solution
- Advanced quality planning (APQP, FMEA, PPAP, process flow diagram, control plan)
- Data Collection & SPC
- Non-Conformance management
- Document Management
- Incoming/outgoing inspection
- System Integration with PLM-ERP-MES
- Equipment & Machine Integration
- Action Management
- KPI reporting
- Certificates
The advantages of QDA at a glance
Cost reduction
Reduces Total Cost of Quality and Cost of Poor Quality
Profitability
Increases your EBIT and profitability
Speed to Market
The integrated solution reduces the planning and production of new parts
Transparency
Improves the customer-supplier relationship through a transparent way of working
Consistency
Automated and synchronous process flow across all documents (Process Flow, Control Plan, PFMEA, work instructions, etc.)
Ease of use
Makes it easier to manage large groups of similarly produced parts (parts families) and features a simplified and structured PPAP/FMEA process to guarantee consistent results
Planning/communication/tracking
Accelerated planning and monitoring for the entire project life cycle (with the QDA Action Management tool)
Error elimination
Reduces the number of documents, minimizes data input, and ensures consistency in all phases
Get in touch!
Do you have specific questions about our solutions? Get in touch!
Ludmila Lebedev
Director QDA SOLUTIONS