Many aerospace & defense organizations have placed an increased emphasis on reducing the time to transition products from engineering to manufacturing while simultaneously reducing the product technical risks. One area with the greatest impact on these objectives is detailed design. This is the stage in the product development lifecycle when the development team addresses the detailed product definition and “Design for Six Sigma”. Unfortunately, most aerospace & defense manufacturers still follow a serial process for creating the detailed design. In addition, producibility is often not formally addressed because it is treated as an additional step that requires extra engineering effort that delays completion of the product definition.
This paper presents a solution piloted at Aerojet for the detailed design and manufacture of missile propulsion systems. The software tool at the core of the solution captures manufacturing engineering expertise and provides real-time, quantitative information to link design requirements to the manufacturing processes. This practical approach to Six Sigma-enabled design has been created to help engineering create the detailed design documentation, while simultaneously addressing producibility analysis and characteristic accountability. The result is a reduction in the time to complete detailed design. As importantly, by ensuring compliance with requirements, the solution helps to reduce non-conformances, design changes, and quality escapes.
