USER STORY IN THE EDM/PDM WORLD : Boeing Rocketdyne

USER STORIES

IN THE EDM/PDM WORLD :

BOEING ROCKETDYNE

Introduction
Competition in today's fast-paced global marketplace is forcing many companies to adopt strategies to improve a product's time-to-market and time-to-volume performance. One proven approach for improving both the speed and the efficiency of the product development process is the use of, and reliance on, strategic partners and resources outside the company. Outsourcing has become an increasingly important strategy, and is now one of the fastest growing business sectors, with many companies outsourcing anywhere between 40%-80% of their design and manufacturing processes.

Like any organizational strategy, outsourcing requires effective management control and insight. Therefore, many companies seek a decision management system that offers a secure, collaborative environment from the outset of the outsourcing evaluation through the life of the contractual relationship. Using the internet as a bridge, an outsource management system provides a framework for creating and leveraging information as well as defining and applying decision-making processes outside the framework of transactional systems such as ERP, PDM and SCM. In fact, effective implementation of an outsource management system will enable business partners to build a virtual bridge between processes and systems, without the cost and delay of integration between transactional systems.

Designed from the bottom up as a secure, web-centric solution, ipTeam dramatically improves communication to accelerate decision-making. Leveraging a company's existing Internet infrastructure, it enables product development teams to access, distribute, and collaborate on ideas in a secure environment. These team members span the various functional disciplines across company and suppliers, such as project management, marketing, planning, concept and detail design, procurement, finance, subcontract management, manufacturing engineering, contract manufacturing, logistics, quality and support.

An outsource management solution for manufacturing enterprises, ipTeam facilitates the communication of team members while managing documents, messages, team administration, RFP negotiations, project event tracking, and information on suppliers. NexPrise ipTeam has yielded documented cycle-time reductions of over 50%, and is particularly applicable to industries such as high-tech manufacturing, where approximately 40-80% of the ultimate value of a finished product is contributed by resources outside the company.

Boeing Rocketdyne
Boeing Rocketdyne is using NexPrise's ipTeam for collaborative product development across their extended teams of customers, suppliers, contract manufacturers and design resources.

Business Goals

Develop innovative design for rocket combustion chamber
Evaluate new tools for reducing development and manufacturing time and costs

The Product Team

Boeing-Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California contributed team leadership, conceptual design, and combustion and thermal analysis
Raytheon (formerly the Texas Instruments Defense Division) in Dallas, Texas provided CAD modeling, manufacturing and producability assessment as well as program budget tracking
MacNeal Schwendler in Costa Mesa, California supplied structural analysis expertise
Lockheed Martin in Huntsville, Alabama created launch vehicle requirements
Howmet Corporation in Whitehall, Michigan assumed responsibility for casting producability and costs

Strategy

Enable collaboration among geographically dispersed team from multiple companies, using ipTeam.

Results

Reduced number of parts from hundreds to six
Cut development cycle time by 50%, from two years to one
Reduced manufacturing cycle time by 63%, from two years to nine months
Improved product quality
Created a knowledge repository for re-use on subsequent projects.

For more information, contact Reginald G. Bronner, Jr., Director of Business Development at Nexprise, Inc. - rbronner@nexprise.com or +1 408/327-0330 x2248.

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