Speed and Compliance: How A&D Teams Keep Control as Programs Scale
Full Transcript
Marshall Wood
Good morning. Welcome. I’m Marshall Wood. I’m a member of the customer success team here at Arena PTC. I’ve been in this role for about eight years, advising customers on best practices and using Arena’s product lifecycle management system, introducing modules and features. I’ve been involved in PLM for over 25 years as a user, administrator, and trainer, among other things. We just want to thank everyone for joining us in this webinar, where we’re going to explore how aerospace companies cope as product complexity increases and expectations.
Now, this event is being recorded, so you’ll be able to watch it again if you can’t get enough of us. And if you have questions, drop them in the Q&A panel. I know all the mics are off, so use that Q&A panel. And at the end of our discussion, we’re going to get to as many of those questions as we can. So, I’m joined today by a longtime Arena customer, Phil Seymour, from RAVE Aerospace. Phil, you want to share a bit about yourself?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. Well, my name is Phil Seymour. I’m currently the Director of Engineering Services at RAVE Aerospace. We’re formerly a part of Safran Aerospace. We build IFE and IFC systems for commercial aircrafts. And I’ve been in the aerospace industry for over 30 years, manufacturing, focusing primarily on configuration management. And RAVE Aerospace did implement the Arena PLM system back in late 2010, prior to my coming on board.
Marshall Wood
Yeah. So, as Phil said, RAVE has been an Arena customer for many years. Phil and I meet regularly to review his team’s needs and align our efforts. It’s been a real partnership, as with many of our customers, where we encourage this kind of feedback on the system and try to roll out enhancements that will make life easier for everyone who’s using the PLM system.
So, Phil, I know you’ve gone through several audits recently, and I know this can be like the ultimate test of your product clients. So, how are those doing for you?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. We had a lot of audits recently. We had a European regulatory audit. We had an OEM audit and then a third-party aerospace industry audit, all in the last two months. Each one was two to three days, several sections related to things that I had to deal with.
And they went pretty well. It went really well. And we always at RAVE Aerospace, we look at audits as something very positive. We do our internal audits as well as our external audits. But we get to see these process controls from a different area. And in doing so, it just helps to identify and shore up all the process activities.
Marshall Wood
Yeah, certainly a significant part of our jobs these days. Let me ask you, though, when an auditor comes in and asks for proof of a change or approval of a product configuration, how does that conversation differ today than it was five or even ten years ago?
Phil Seymour
Just stating that after every audit, we have internal audits, external audits, and we shore up our processes and consistencies. It’s great to see things from a different angle because you don’t always know how somebody looks at it. And often it’s a more holistic view that says, yeah, but what happens when this goes on here? And you’re focused on those internal sections, but suddenly you see it from a different angle, and it changes your purview and makes you able to make yourself better and the company better.
Marshall Wood
Right. So I was just wondering, when that auditor comes in and asks for proof of an approval or proof of product configuration, how does that conversation differ from maybe years ago?
Phil Seymour
Well, years ago, people would be shuffling pieces of paper and photocopies and just rifling through everything. And there was that uncomfortable silence where everybody’s waiting for a simple answer. Well, can I see proof of that? Where do you have this?
And now, with a central database, with a PLM, with that source of truth in there, you can link things together. Arena has the items-to-items association. It’s kind of like the BOM or where used, but it’s for associated documentation.
So normally in our system, what we’ve been doing is whenever there’s a document, formal process document, you’re normally listing reference documentation, external, and so on. And if that’s literally listed there properly as a summary from what’s inside the body of the document, you can go into Arena and use the items sub-tab, and you make that connection.
So when we have the audits now, they say, “Well, where’s the process for that? Okay. Where’s the instruction? Where’s your forms? And do you have records of that?” And we can easily connect those all together and make it very easy to bring it up. As a matter of fact, one of our customer OEM audits they were giving us a positive, not just the findings and observations, but a positive, saying the fact that everything was all focused and centralized was a plus.
Marshall Wood
That’s really cool. I love to hear innovative ways that people use different parts of the system. And that’s a classic example of that. But I bet most people listening, and myself included, we’ve been through some of those last-minute fire drills to prepare for an audit.
What helps teams at RAVE stay audit-ready and avoid those kinds of fire drills and build confidence with the customers, and regulators, and auditors?
Phil Seymour
Well, again, I think it’s just repetition and experience from that. We make sure that we understand the processes, that they’re clear, and that we have owners for those audits, and they’re regularly reviewed. And then we do our internal audits, as well as the external audits. And over time, you get to see the pattern. And when you make those improvements, you’re looking for contingencies, and so on, it really shores it up. And making sure that there’s an annual audit and at a mandatory minimum, make sure that you check up for things that get to be up to speed. Because a lot of times, something changes, sometimes it’s minor as title changes. And you’ve got to put titles, not the names of people, obviously, but then suddenly it’ll shift, and you have to make sure you check for those.
So at least once a year, if not more than that, if you take the initiative, you can catch it, you’re able to make those updates.
Marshall Wood
I think when you realize that passing an audit is an absolute necessity for the company to operate, a motivator. And dedicating resources to these kinds of tasks is key, and not just in the week before the auditor knocks on the door, right?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. It has to be a top-bottom management belief in the whole thing. Because if they just want to check a box somewhere, it’s not going to work. That’s when people say, “Give me this much money, and I’ll give you a process that passes.” That’s not the idea here. Everybody wants to have a better company, more successful. And these audits are really meant to make you more successful. They’re the positive. And that’s just necessary in the industry today.
Marshall Wood
Yeah. I said it in the past in our conversations, it’s not just about that proverbial happy face sticker, right?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. It’s not just a happy face and check the box. Yeah.
Marshall Wood
Right. So, how does this improve control represented by adopting a PLM system like Arena? How does that help your team move faster rather than slowing them down? Maybe you can share an example of that in your experience.
Phil Seymour
Well, in the old days, we would have a manila folder with a printout of the change, and the information, and the drafts, and all that, and the markups. And you’d have to circle it around and put it on somebody’s desk. They get a wet signature and move it to the next one.
And you had to keep working through all of that, sometimes in multiple buildings. And it just was a guarantee that would take up to a week to get the whole thing done. Especially when you have executives or department owners, they would be needing to sign it, and they’re going to be busy with meetings for half a day, and do you need to go out of sequence or whatever it takes. And it was just kind of messy. But now with a full digital electronic approval, you have the dashboard and the email notifications, usually by default, that’s kept on, which is good because some people use one over the other.
Majority use email notifications. But it’s all tied to the lifecycle changes and the due date reminders and everything. We make a mandatory due date reminder for everything. That way, there’s the reminders. Some things were not critically important. So, okay, you put them out a month, but it needs that cycle to make sure that people are reminded to sign it, which means that the team signing off is secondary. I have my configuration administration team. They need to go get the signatures to remind people, but the automated system is already doing that. So there’s multiple layers of telling people about that. We also use the one-or-more signature concept for the roles within the routes. And we make sure there’s always proxy. So we always have multiple people.
I think I mentioned to you before, if we have an East Coast and West Coast, and center middle of the landlocked area, all part of the team. And the East Coast person goes on vacation, well, we already have it baked in that the West Coast or the central person is responsible. And we can contact anybody in that role with that one or more scenario to make sure they get things signed because somebody else is up. There’s a secondary. This is better than waiting for a proxy scenario where it goes to somebody after so much time or what have you. And those, to me, always just cause delays.
Marshall Wood
Sounds like a great way to address some lessons that was through the fact that somebody was on vacation when they didn’t know about it and be able to use your system to address those kinds of scenarios is really a good story. So, in addition to this improved control that PLM offers you, what about the improved visibility of data to help your team? Again, to help them move faster rather than slowing them down. Can you share examples of the improved quality that the system offers?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. You can’t have 50 sources of your data that everybody relies on, or one department says, “Well, this is what we use,” and somebody else’s data is used. And sometimes when a company grows organically or grows rapidly organically, you have all of this isolated islands of information, and it needs to be centralized.
So, a couple of years ago, we modernized our ERP system. And when we did that, we said, “Okay, where’s the data coming from? Where does it need to come from? What do we have? What are all the processes?” Just wrote everything out. And we ended up understanding that we have the PLM, we have the ERP, and then we have a little bit more of a program-centric database. And so we focus on optimizing all of those and minimizing, or eliminating, the other sources of data. And then we pour all that into a data lake, and then we’re able to mine that data when we have something like inventory versus latest revision in the PLM and be able to tie that together, or change orders versus shipments, that sort of thing.
It works very well. So it’s centralizing. So the PLM is centralizing our item information, our source of truth, lifecycle. If you’ve got something that is released and effective, that’s the one that’s active. You may have older inventory, whether it’s used as is or scrapped, or maybe there’s an implementation going on, you’re able to see that. If you’ve got something that’s in the working revision as a draft that’s being submitted, all that can be for the same item. You have to identify which one is the one that you need for your purpose.
Marshall Wood
I certainly see a trend over the past couple of years where more and more people are doing that data kind of approach to sort of marry data from PLM with ERP, or MES, or even CRM. So it’s great to see that you guys have benefited from that kind of approach as well.
Now what about AI? Do you see AI as having a role here?
Phil Seymour
Yeah. We’ve approached AI a lot. Good to see that Arena is starting to add AI in. I know that’s been going. We have the file compare and the file summary activities. That’s really good.
And we have various other well-known tools that we use to try to find a better way to get through the data. But again, it’s really kind of like number crunching. You have that proverbial intern, and you say, “Well, I need to go get this, compile this, work this, combine this there, put it in a spreadsheet that looks like this, and add a graph.” And instead of taking maybe a week and a lot more errors, it’ll take maybe a couple of minutes, and then you can fine-tune it further because you need to ask the right question. I think I’ve mentioned to you before, when I have the change order, I like the idea of the file summary because we summarize the change.
I think it’s good at summarizing what engineers try to say to something cohesive for reviewers to look at. But if somebody’s reviewed a change in meetings and it comes to the change, they should be looking at a review, not an initial view. And they’re going to say, “Okay, is the title what we’re talking about? Great. Does it have the three things I said needed to be changed? Great. Okay. I’m good.” Next layer person says, “Well, I need to know a little more information about that.” And they’re dialing through the different tabs, and maybe they can get a summary out of the thing, the items. And you go, “Okay, that’s good. That’s what I needed. I’m good to sign.” And then the third layer, if it’s really necessary, would be, “I’ve got to look at everything. I’ve got to open it up, look at the drafts, look at the finished version.” So all these layers are available to the reviewer based on their needs. So I’m not forcing everybody to spend an hour looking through things. It can be up to them with something informed, not just a rubber stamp.
Marshall Wood
I think you said it well once before. These tools, analytics, data lakes, AI, they convert this raw data into real actionable information that you can take to decide what your next project, next attack is going to be.
Phil Seymour
Yeah. We want to spend less time converting data into information, and we want to spend more time making decisions that can lead to the actions.
Marshall Wood
So while these regulatory requirements, and audits, and control and visibility, concerns represent a bigger portion of our time than ever. A&D customers tell me that demand is up, products are continuously getting more complex. They need to scale up. So, for organizations considering sort of organizing the information management processes, where should they start? And where is that push to modernize coming from?
Phil Seymour
Well, I think that’s the one phrase is continuous improvement. But everyone’s asking, that’s customers, that’s program management, product management, design engineering. It doesn’t matter how good everything is. Somebody wants something more, different, better. And the complexity expands, but somehow that timeline, that product to market, never seems to change. And so you’ve got more data, you’ve got more requirements, you’ve got more of everything, but yet you still need to make sure the timing meets.
It’s got to be perfect, great priced, on time, no failures, all that sort of business. And yeah, there’s more regulations than ever before. So it’s important to make sure we can scale the information and make sure it’s properly compartmentalized, categorized, and so on, so that you don’t lose that delineation that distinguishes what type of information you have and where it’s at.
I know item numbering systems and all the places I’ve been, they’re all like, “Oh yeah, four digits, that’s all we need.” I go, “Yeah. Okay. It’s not enough.” Normally, if you think there’s 100 variations of a product, add another digit. If you think it’s ten, go to 100. It’s 100, go to a thousand. It’s never enough. I had one company that had 99 variations of some simple product. And of course, they ran out. So they had to go through another system. I think the automotive industry says, look, 14 digits for a part number, we’re done. I also told you I’m not in favor of the smart numbering as much as you can because that’s going to “paint yourself into a corner.” You’re going to run out of what you thought was going to be fine. And it just creates rules that then have to break.
Marshall Wood
Yeah. In our past conversations, I recall you referring to all these points of control as widgets. I thought that was an appropriate term because they’re such a generic term that helps you clarify all these points of control.
Phil Seymour
Yeah. I’m trying to avoid the idea that I get deeply involved in all these different products. I know the products, but from a configuration standpoint, they’re basically widgets. If it’s a document, a process document, a quality document, product quality test report, or something, or the product itself, they’re all considered a form of widget data with attributes.
And then we work to make sure we have all those attributes dialed in. I like the fact that in the PLM, you can create your custom attributes, and instantly you’re able to use them for searching, and filtering, and sorting, and so on, becomes very valuable for adding things that are maybe unique to the business.
Marshall Wood
Shifting gears a little bit. So in this industry, where compliance, traceability, and quality are just non-negotiable, I feel that there’s kind of a misconception that moving faster means cutting steps, minimizing approval, reducing documentation to bare minimum.
But in reality, the most successful A&D organizations that I work with move faster because they have that better control, better visibility, and more confidence in their product data.
Phil Seymour
Yeah. Having the key data ready and having converted information is really critical. Again, you can build all these various attributes that you want to have on it, and then suddenly you go, “But what do I do with that? And when do you look at it?” In the ancient days when the internet got started for real in the ’90s, suddenly we’re like, “Yeah, but how do I get to something? I’m looking for this. Where do I go?” And all these Googles and, was it Ask Jeeves?
That was one of them that was out there. I’m dating myself. But we suddenly had to figure out how to get to the information from that data. And this is the same idea. You put all your information in this PLM tool, and now you’re able to harness that information and that grooves. Just the way it works, really, having 24/7 access to the data. And it’s really critical. I don’t want these fact-finding meetings to happen. I want to have decision-based. So I want everybody to bring the information they have, and then we can make those decisions faster instead of sitting in a meeting going, “Okay. Yeah. All right. I’ll have to look it up.” I mean, other than a startup meeting and the assigning of people and all that, it doesn’t work very well.
Marshall Wood
Right there with you with the Ask Jeeves reference. This is a bit of a softball question, but I’ll ask you anyway. How important is it for you to secure access to the controlled information? And how do you organize your teams to achieve that level of view today?
Phil Seymour
Well, again, it’s critical to start with the idea that the source of truth is in the PLM, and you have to make sure that it’s thorough. So when you have all this information in there, there’s sensitive information. I mean, this is not like CEO salary stuff and compensation, but it can be company product-sensitive data. And so you’ve got to make sure you understand what the revision is, and you have to understand the data that comes with it, the drawings, let’s say. Some of them may be very public style, other ones with information on how to build, and ingredients, and so on. That’s more important. So we have to be very careful with that. So we watch carefully about how things are set up for information security.
We use the Arena access roles. We switched to that about eight, nine years ago. Key access rule variations, we use that for the rules. We link that to our user groups from the roles. And that’s usually aligned with the department of functional groups. So we have the groups that are called the groups they are, even if there’s repeats. And then we have the access roles with all the distinct rule variations, and we put them together.
Contractors are different from employees. And then we have, obviously, basic and advanced suppliers, and they’re different as well. That advanced supplier is really good because when you have a subcontractor, and they’re trustworthy, you’ve got your NDAs and everything with them, then you have that ability to put them in specifically to a product from one revision on forward.
So that works very well because that way, we’ve got that. And then the latest situation to help them is not just the information of the item, but also the change order effectivity and tying them that. So they also see what’s going on and why, not just the end result and a red line, let’s say. I’m sorry. Yeah, controlling that works very well to make sure that that stays cohesive and defined.
Marshall Wood
Right. Let’s spend a few minutes talking about the potential risks that aerospace companies like RAVE face. Many A&D organizations rely heavily on supplier networks. And what challenges arise here? What do you do when suppliers don’t have access to the correct version of the latest technical data?
Phil Seymour
Yeah, that’s a problem, right? That’s ambiguity, that’s questions. What we’re trying to do is make sure that we have the data provided to them. The CAD file, the model files, pick and place files for circuit boards, things like that, we want to make sure that that’s part of the package that the suppliers have access to, so that when we connect them to it, they have that data.
And so they also know what’s exactly right. So you have a purchase order that defines quantity, timelines, and all that business, and the revision, and then they have access to it. So when we work with those suppliers, if there’s any hiccup, they can come straight to the configuration team, saying, “I don’t see this version, or I don’t have that yet, or I can’t see this,” because you also have the ability to control the bill of materials, the notification, and so on.
So that works very well to make sure it goes that way. If they’re not a trusted person yet, supplier yet, we may do an extract sort of thing and then carefully work that. But we really don’t like insecure emails or FTP sites that are just general places that seem to be wanting to be more public than not public.
Marshall Wood
Yeah. Looking for best practices you’ve learned or adopted for securely sharing the controlled product information with the external partners and suppliers.
Phil Seymour
Yeah. There is the level. I mean, we have design folks, but you also have production folks. You have the proverbial AVL that’s always out there in the system. And what we make sure is that there is a connection to trusted parties. We make sure we work with finance and other folks to make sure, again, that they’ve got agreements signed via proverbial MVR and NDA, things like that. But once it’s set up like that, they are needing for quotes and things like that. So the connection with the advanced supplier directly into the items, our safest way to do that.
We don’t like, we say, and I’ve said it before, you get somebody coming in to your castle here, you don’t want to give them the keys to the kingdom. You want to give them the first-floor bathroom and the welcome hall, that sort of thing. But you’ve got to protect your data in the meantime with your dragons and your moats and drawbridges and all that stuff because you’ve got to protect it. So you have to organize that. And again, the rules that go into the roles, that sort of thing. In addition to the suppliers, this is all important. We have contractors, obviously, all the time. We make sure that they’re limited for what their scope is for visibility.
Marshall Wood
So we talked about control and visibility and how to leverage those things without slowing execution. But how do you manage to reduce this kind of supplier risk, especially without slowing down execution? What elements of PLM do you use to control that?
Phil Seymour
Well, a lot of the work we have that is subcontracted to do a lot of that muscle, a lot of that labor, and the design focus is very strong with us. So we are starting to use, for the last year or so, the supply chain intelligence module that’s worked out really well. And I’m looking at actually, instead of being the intermittent in between where somebody says, “Can you add this and this,” is to have the design engineers actually have the ability, if I give it to them, to actually go into Arena and create those supplier items.
So the ability to find crosses and so on for the various electromechanical components and to simply, with a single click, put them in still keeps my control where they can get what they need without having somebody else do it for them. Then I get to be able to have my configuration team take a request and put that into the RAVE Aerospace item itself with all the variation sources and so on. So this is very, very useful. Again, I mentioned the non-material related items to items. That really helps connect, so people can look at it. Again, you have a quality test report for a product.
Well, that product is obviously a reference, but the quality test report is not part of the bill of materials. That’s a process document or a product document. We’re looking at the requirements module. We have our own requirement system, but we don’t have it integrated in with the PLM.
That’s a good possibility for us because then you’ve got the product itself with all its attributes, and you have the requirements building against it. And that works out very well. So hopefully these all will provide greater amounts of information to reduce the risk of going too far down in one direction and realizing that you’ve made a mistake, you’ve got to backtrack.
Marshall Wood
Excellent. The supply chain intelligence module, I see more and more people leveraging its ability to do that. Always look up for electronic part information, including risk and compliance. Being able to do this without leaving your PLM system is something that I think is a major factor to reducing that kind of risk and spending time in other systems.
So great to hear that you guys are moving in that direction. So if there’s one thing that you’d like to emphasize for today’s attendees to take away from this conversation to improve their control and better prepare for growth, what would it be?
Phil Seymour
I mean, I’ve been doing the configuration for quite a while, various names and titles. To me, what’s really, really important is to gather the information and to protect it, the data that can convert it to information as best you can.
But you’ve got to get all that information centralized. And then you really have to, I use the phrase, obsessively protect, the resulting trust that’s come from everybody. I’ve had people lack the trust, saying, “I don’t know if this is good or not,” because two years ago, there was a minor typo on a document. Oh, it’s that important to you? Yeah. So if people are converting and centralizing their data, it’s critical that you make critical information readily available to them. And that if they learn to trust it, you absolutely have to protect that trust.
You cannot lose that trust because then everybody will fracture off back into their own little islands of doing what they knew that they can trust at arm’s length. I had one guy once that was, this is in the old days of the controlled binders, where you’d printed out everything that came out, and you put it in all the binders, or we could use that, stamped them physically, and all that. And the guy came and said, “Oh yeah, I’ve got all your great drawings. I’ve got them right here in this drawer. I printed them out. I stuck them there so I will never lose them.” And I realized that that was, okay, I’ve got to get past that as well to say you’ve got a 24/7 system that tells you exactly what you need. It is the source of truth and trust that. So my team has to be very sure that everything is trusted. If there’s an issue, we attack it immediately to retain that trust.
Marshall Wood
Awesome. Great. So yeah, thanks for that. On that note, let’s shift over to see if there’s any questions from the attendees here. Looking at my question chat here, I don’t see anything yet. If anybody has any questions, be sure to throw them in there, or you can certainly follow up with us as well if you…
Phil Seymour
Sure. Yeah. We’ve already gone through 30 plus minutes, so that’s good.
Marshall Wood
Yeah. All right. Well, we’re going to keep watching the panel for questions here. But as we wrap up the discussion, I want to just, again, express my thanks to Phil Seymour from RAVE for sharing his experiences and insights, and everybody for joining us.
Marshall Wood
I do think that one theme that came across clearly today is that speed and compliance don’t have to be opposing goals as aerospace and defense organizations grow and add complexity and face increasing compliance requirements. The companies succeeded are the ones that are going to be able to establish that trusted foundation for their processes, for their product data, for the supplier collaboration. In this industry, moving fast only matters when everyone trusts the product definition behind the decision.
Phil Seymour
Yeah. I think that’s really critical for me. It’s this, I don’t know if you want to call it a bank vault or again, this massive castle and troves of information, but it’s really important to hold onto that carefully.
You don’t want breaches; you don’t want other people finding the information they shouldn’t have. We had one of our OEM auditors. We asked for the summary of their paperwork, and they sent us the one from another competitor’s audit, like, oops, avert the eyes and say, “Delete that all out of there. We don’t want to see that.” That sort of thing can happen often. And so we have to protect the data. So our information security initiatives are getting stronger and stronger. We’ve got certification, and we’re working to make sure that we’re completely airtight with that because it’s too easily disseminated information, and it’s dangerous if it’s the wrong information…
Marshall Wood
Absolutely.
Phil Seymour
In the wrong hands.
Marshall Wood
So yeah, as I said, this webinar has been recorded, and hopefully you’ll be able to see it on the arenasolutions.com website or in the Arena community at a later time. And again, we appreciate your participation and hope this discussion provides some practical insight to take back to your organization.
Have a great day, everybody. Thank you.
Phil Seymour
Thank you very much.