Bill-of-materials visualization for aerospace & defense: A digital transformation retrospective

Abstract

We look back at seven years of work to reduce test cost in complex aerospace manufacturing organizations using a bill-of-materials visualization, describing the evolution from a data integration team to a data analytics team, and several of the innovations we developed to be successful. We illustrate a maturity path for digital transformation using open-source tools that visualize over a hundred products, comprised of thousands of parts and bills-of-material to optimize factory flow. We aggregate past work for reducing test cost in aerospace manufacturing, reinforcing and extending work of Deming, and place it in the context of evolving data science capabilities, specifically so others can evaluate how they might accelerate their own digital transformations. We follow the development of a single product from its conception through its deployment and use, a production flow visualization of bills-of-materials plus operations, and discuss how it facilitates analytics and decision-making, depicting complementary visual analytics capabilities built to support it. Reducing cost of testing in complex manufacturing environments is our primary focus by understanding how testing contributes to product cost, and to gain insight into the testing process to reduce testing – and ultimately product – cost. Complex manufacturing organizations considering digital transformations can evaluate the principles, approach, and problems we encountered throughout the team's evolution, specifically, how to extend Deming's work complemented by standard bill-of-materials plus operations visualizations to make critical manufacturing optimizations.