AeroTEC is an aerospace engineering and testing company that specializes in the engineering, certification, and testing of aircraft and related systems. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, their main engineering office is located just north of Boeing Field. They also have three additional campuses: the AeroTEC Flight Test Center in Moses Lake, Washington, a Manufacturing Center in Arlington, Washington, and an Engineering Center in Wichita, Kansas.
AeroTEC helps companies around the world design, test, and certify new aircraft and aerospace products, including hybrid/electric, hydrogen technology, supersonic, and eVTOLs, leveraging their integrated assets to help their innovative customers bring their products to market quickly and efficiently.
The Catalyst for Change
The aerospace industry is changing and evolving rapidly. AeroTEC recognized the need to lean into new technologies and a digital transformation strategy, or risk being disrupted themselves. With goals to be a leader in the space that drives extreme levels of value for their customers and internal stakeholders, the team at AeroTEC recognized they needed to be at the forefront of it, or risk being disrupted themselves.
Embracing digital transformation
Unencumbered by legacy tools, software, and integrations that are challenging to unstitch, AeroTEC has been able to leverage the latest technology and leapfrog issues that more established companies may suffer from. As a smaller company, they’re able to be agile and adapt, staying nimble in order to evolve.
AeroTEC has adopted multiple Siemens software solutions throughout the design lifecycle including NX, Teamcenter, and a range of Siemens Simcenter Tools for advanced simulation applications. They utilize STAR-CCM+ for CFD analysis, Simcenter Femap for FEA, Simcenter 3D, and Amesim for 1D system simulation and system performance analysis.
Taking a model-based approach to their engineering design, they implemented Siemens Teamcenter to manage the entire product lifecycle and maintain configuration control. As their team performs design, analysis, and simulation work, the resulting data sets are stitched together and integrated through Teamcenter so they can be shared across departments such as manufacturing, quality, and supply chain.
Teamcenter is leveraged for the overall repository of all of their design data. Not just limited to CAD models, but also analysis, reports, and other attributes and various documentation are going into their Teamcenter PLM as well.
AeroTEC’s PLM Journey
Before implementing Teamcenter, AeroTEC was leveraging file and folder-based storage for the management of their CAD data. Post implementation, AeroTEC began to look forward in their PLM footprint, exploring various options within the Xcelerator portfolio. While many of the products were of interest, the immediate needs were focused on, digitalizing the Change Management process and how they handled ITAR-restricted data. It also provided simpler control of user access to different types of data, as well as useful data and metrics regarding design progression and schedule integration.
Future projects will be focused on streamlining their internal processes and moving towards a fully digital thread.
Connecting digital threads
Up until recently, AeroTEC used two CAD systems. Deciding to further invest in the Siemens ecosystem, the company chose to focus on NX, which let it standardise processes, policies and templates.
Converging around a single source, not just for CAD but for the overall PLM system, helped AeroTEC standardise, work more efficiently and keep data native, avoiding the need to translate or transform it into different formats. That translates to faster product development. It also made teams more agile. Where work was previously segregated, with a designer unable to move onto a project built in a different system, everything now sits in NX, so resources can shift across projects and products far more rapidly and seamlessly.
The partnership with Applied CAx
Bringing a PLM system into a company for the first time is a long road, and not something to take on lightly. Applied CAx’s experience shortened that road and made the process considerably more efficient, drawing on having walked it with more than one customer and knowing where it needs to end up.
Across both commercial and engineering conversations, Applied CAx fields specialists who know the Siemens toolset in depth, which is what makes the partnership work day to day.
More from AeroTEC: https://aerotec.com