SMT & Inspection |
Aegis facilitates BAE Systems lean manufacturing program
Aegis Industrial Software announced that BAE Systems in Indiana, USA, has implemented Aegis Manufacturing Information Management Software to create a complete link among all business and factory processes within one seamless system for optimum lean manufacturing. The suite includes CheckPoint, CircuitCAM, and Fusion iView software modules.
BAE Systems needed to upgrade its software solutions to a platform that could handle all the latest technologies and integrate them into one simple format. This included offline machine programming and importing production and design information, bills of materials (BOMs) and more, plus adding digital photos and video to electronic instruction information and manual documents. The goal was to put 100% of product and production information in one place and to make the information accessible anywhere within the company at any time. After sending its criteria to four suppliers and reviewing presentations, BAE Systems selected Aegis as its provider.
Royce Binion, Manager of Business Development for Civil Aerospace for BAE Systems, said "One of the things that impressed us with the Aegis software was that when we bring in a BOM, we can append the bin location and the lane location to each part number. We have more than 20,000 places to search for a part on our production floor. When an operator is using the iView software, he is able to point to any component on the circuit card and receive the component part number, where it's used, and the reference designator information on it. He’ll also get a lane and bin location so he can quickly go right to the part.
Out of all the packages, Aegis was the only one that tied the BOM to the CAD drawing enough to where we can just point at a reference designator in Fusion iView and get all the component information."
CheckPoint software allows BAE Systems to pull in any user selectable information for each job and to link parts to bin location. These features, Binion said, are critical for maintaining a true lean manufacturing facility.
"We had quite a bit of criteria we demanded. Aegis was the only provider that met all of our requirements and provided all the front end applications for new product introduction," Binion said. "They can generate all our machine programs, create electronic work instructions, and display them through Web browsers."
