July 6, 2010 - A leading innovator in the aerospace and defense industry, Raytheon must ensure that its products perform flawlessly under an extraordinary range of conditions including ground, sea, air and space combat and defense operations. At the core of Raytheon’s ability to deliver its sensing, missile, aviation and defense creations is its design process. At the heart of its design process is a common Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment, PTC’s Windchill. Windchill allows the global company of 75,000 employees to collaborate and integrate its technologies, processes and people together enabling them to design anywhere, build anywhere and support anywhere -- a strategic business initiative at Raytheon.
Raytheon is deploying the Windchill PLM software across all its divisions to manage, share and use product data more effectively enabling it to produce the predictable products its customers rely upon for the success of their aerospace and defense missions. Windchill increases Raytheon’s ability to meet emerging customer needs with speed, agility and accuracy while also ensuring its products are developed to exact specifications.
This is a long term, multi-phase, multi-division rollout of a PLM system, and I’d like to give you an inside look at how Raytheon is accomplishing this, the challenges it is alleviating and the benefits Raytheon is experiencing. Please let me know if you’re interested in additional information of if you would like to set up a time to speak with Raytheon and PTC.
BWM/Oracle Designs USA 17 – Fastest America’s Cup boat ever built – with WIndchill & Pro/E
Ninety-feet wide by 90-feet deep, flying across ocean waves at 3x the speed of wind, the USA 17 is the fastest America’s Cup boat ever built. With no advance knowledge of the race venue, ocean or weather conditions, and restricted to historic legal and construction conditions, the BMW/Oracle Racing Team overcame enormous obstacles to design the 2010 winning boat.
Before building the mammoth structure, which includes the biggest wing mast ever built (229 feet and taller than a wing on an Airbus A380 aircraft), the team modeled and designed the boat using PTC’s design and modeling software, Pro/ENGINEER. Within Pro/ENGINEER, the team constructed multiple 3D models, conducted wind and water simulations and created advanced hydraulic, electrical control and sensor systems to be sure that the USA 17 could tackle any weather and ocean conditions.
Creating this winning boat required the tight collaboration of 200 team members including 30 design teams in seven locations around the globe, 80 fabricators in four places throughout the United States working over 150,000 hours of construction. To coordinate their efforts, the BMW/Oracle team used Windchill, product lifecycle management software from PTC, to manage the incredible collaboration and management complexities of the eight month process. Windchill enabled the large, geographically dispersed team to share up-to-date design and analysis information, ensuring the boat would be constructed properly and quickly.
The success of BWM/Oracles championship USA 17 was a triumph both on the sea and in design. Please let me know if you’re interested in learning more about the processes that created the USA 17, the boat that won the 33rd America’s Cup.