• Case Study

Stone Aerospace

Elimination of $20,000 in cable rework and expedited delivery costs.

John Harman, Electrical Engineer: “There’s no doubt in my mind that if we had used our previous design methods we would have run into many problems where the design did not exactly match the bill of materials. It would have required cables to be sent back for rework which would have involved considerable additional expenses and set the schedule back. With our new automated approach we got the design right the first time and did not have redo a single cable. We estimate that we saved about $20,000 in cable rework and expedited delivery costs. We also achieved substantial productivity gains because engineers had a very clear picture of what one another were doing and because of the automated checks performed by the software.”

The time needed to design the wiring harness for the AUV was reduced by around 12 weeks.

Stone Aerospace defined a common library of parts and engineers working on the project drew from this library to save time and ensure consistency. The software reduced the time to design the cables and greatly reduced errors by, for example, ensuring that the connectors mated with each other, that there were enough pins to handle each wire in the assembly, and that the right penetrators were used.

Effective design team collaboration created common nomenclature improving quality and cutting errors.

Stone Aerospace defined a common library of parts, most of them simply copied from previous projects, and engineers working on the project drew from this library to save time and ensure consistency. The software reduced the time to design the cables and greatly reduced errors by, for example, ensuring that the connectors mated with each other, that there were enough pins to handle each wire in the assembly, and that the right penetrators were used.

They achieved substantial productivity gains because engineers had a very clear picture of what one another were doing and because of the automated checks performed by the software. When they design ARTEMIS’ successor , it will be easy to repurpose the libraries and nomenclature as well as the design itself, which will provide additional efficiencies.