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Todays aerospace and defense engineers need current, complete and consistent data quickly, in a format that ts in with modern research methods and collaboration practices. Global information resource solutions are being developed to t the bill.
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ollaboration is a key practice in todays global design and manufacturing environment. Communication with peers and experts is an essential part of how engineers and designers in every discipline and industry have to do their jobs. Social networking technologies have greatly expanded these opportunities. Not surprisingly, young engineers, who have embraced social media in their personal and academic lives, have embraced it in their professional lives as well. In recent years, they have adapted social networking technologies into their workflow, and their older peers in many cases have followed. This development has created a wider community with which an engineer can collaborate and seek advice and information. With so many potential resources for information, nd1 Published by Machine Design Custom Media

ing the content relevant to ones project can be difcult. In todays world of heavy workloads and fast turnaround times, engineers need to get the latest relevant information quickly to complete their projects. The key now is how to nd and connect to that content using social networking features and related tools. As social media is maturing, users are finding new ways in which to integrate it into their workow. But it remains a challenge to structure these media in a way that leads engineers to the correct content and/or a community of ideas in a timely manner. Complete and accurate information regarding the entire scope of a project, over the course of the products entire life cycle, is needed as soon as possible. Among other things required when they undertake a design or

redesign project, engineers must have access to relevant standards, to design tools and related data, and to parts information. Using the right information resources has never been more important, and tools adapted from social media can help. This paper will examine the various issues involved in adapting social media to become part of the engineering workow, and present one information providers vision of how content may be organized and accessed in todays product development climate.

CHANGES IN RESEARCH AND WORKFLOW

Engineers who have come into the workforce in the past 10 years or so are used to a much different way of doing research and completing projects. Conditioned in the give-and-take of social media, they expect to be able to interact in real time with a community of people who can point them in the right direction. They also are not content to wait for answers from senior staff or others who may not be able to respond immediately. Since they began using the Internet as teenagers, they have come to rely on search engines such as Google that provide instant results. This means that internal knowledge resources arent shared as much

as they might be, sometimes because senior engineers may be reluctant to share, but often because junior engineers rst source for information is online. Traditional ways to do research for an aerospace or defense engineering project dont apply to young engineers. The old way was to look through material, from parts catalogs to standards publications to design textbooks. But unless you know precisely what you are looking for and have found it before, those methods are extremely time-consuming. Printed catalogs were a helpful resource at one time, but many suppliers have eschewed them for online resources. Worse, if the printed material has been around for a while, you run the risk of relying on outdated information. This narrow way of research no longer reects how engineers need to do their jobs. A m o re g l o b a l re s o u rc e i s re q u i re d . Searching the World Wide Web is the tool most often used, as it is usually an advantage over print in terms of time, unless what one is looking for is difficult to put into proper search terms. Many younger engineers have grown up never knowing a time when one could not go online to nd more information on a given subject. They expect to nd content quickly, and to be able to engage peers in real-time discussion about it. But the information one finds on the Web can be haphazard and disorganized. Searchers might nd inconsistencies in information from multiple sources, which can be a major setback. And there is no guarantee that the sites posting such information for free will be accurate or constantly keep everything updated. When looking for information using a conventional Internet search engine, one quickly comes to appreciate the value of normalized and managed content. If you go through Google, you will have to go through a number of Web sites to do your
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research, and it can be difcult to navigate all that content, says Chuck Davis, director of product management and IT for IHS, an information solutions provider based in Englewood, Colo. But if you have a tool that gets all the information you need to show up in one place, you can make informed decisions faster. You wont feel like you are going down the rabbit hole. If you build a community within and outside your organization, you will know what questions to ask and where to do research. Indeed, developers of many CAD programs used by engineers are incorporating capabilities of social-networking techniques such as blogs, wikis and RSS feeds into their products, because they know the younger generation of engineers are used to working in this way. [1] So things like chat functions, instant messages and forums are part of todays engineers everyday workflow. The challenge, though, is to structure them in a way that is not distracting. Engineers of all ages and experience levels like to rely on colleagues and business associates to help them come up with the information they need. Discussions in person, over the phone, by email, by instant message, text messaging or via social networking sites about these matters are an essential part of the modern workow and can sometimes be extremely helpful. But they cannot be relied upon exclusively. Individual memories are not always perfect, and not everyone has the latest information at their ngertips. In addition, sometimes people are prevented from sharing information, whether because of copyright issues, regulatory compliance issues, competition issues, company policies or security regulations. The question is, what is the best way to use social modes to get everyone to solve problems? notes Davis. The answer is that social media can offer new
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approaches to solving problems, or provide a sounding board that an engineer can use before he or she delves into a difcult issue. So there is a movement among developers of enterprise software to incorporate the productive aspects of social media while leaving out the features that can waste time or expose a rm to security problems. [2] The collaboration projects that succeed are those that provide users with advantages, writes Matthew Sarrel of eweek.com in his feature, Tapping the Positive from Social Networks for Enterprise Collaboration. And by advantages we mean things that make employees lives easier such as locating the right person with the right expertise for a project, facilitating the management of that project, and providing a secure place to collaborate on that project using tools such as document management, shared workspaces, task lists and discussion boards. [2]

KEEPING UP WITH EVOLVING INFORMATION

Another obstacle is rapidly changing information. What was the optimal part for a product that was developed a few months ago may no longer be available, or may have been supplanted by something better. The engineers textbooks, manuals, websites and colleagues may not be aware of this. But he or she needs to be, or else the design or redesign might have serious flaws that could waste money and even jeopardize lives. The most difficult task for people in the aerospace and defense industries is supply chain information, including nding the suppliers, manufacturers and parts they need, says Sunny Beetem, project marketing manager for IHS. Obsolescence is a huge issue. If a part is no longer made, how do you nd the best alternative?

Compounding the issue is the fact that military and aerospace equipment has a much longer service life than consumer products, so the risk is greater that component parts will become obsolete over the course of the products life cycle. The modern engineer is extremely connected, and his or her job demands that he or she leverage those connections both social, professional and technological to come up with accurate information at lightning speed. In the Information Age, knowledge workers are expected to take on a heavier load than they used to, because information is easy to find

quickly on the Internet. Therefore, engineers bosses and clients expect them to complete their projects with accelerated timetables, and to take on multiple projects at once. Given those pressures, the young engineer is going to take advantage of whatever information and networking tools are at his or her disposal. He or she can be greatly helped if these tools can point him in the right direction quickly and organize the information he needs coherently. IHS experts suggest that this essential information framework can be broken down into three parts. The rst part of that information involves government and industry standards.

SIGS Academia

Technical & Professional Societies

Design Partners

Engineering Research Sourcing

Suppliers

INTEGRATED ENTERPRISE
Analysts & Media Partners

Marketing Customer Support

Secure, proprietary content and communication

Manufacturing
Contract Manufacturers

Sales

Distribution

Customers and Prospects

Logistics Partners

Prole & promote colleagues & capabilities

Event Invites and Coverage, Product Release Announcements, How-To Videos, Live Chat, Pod Casts and Webinars

Technical & Professional Group Blogs

Live chat, Online Partner & Supplier Research

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Before an engineer does anything else, he or she has to have access to the latest standards and make sure they have not changed. He or she must be able to reference historical standards and review updates. Ideally, all of this information should be in one place. The second part of that framework focuses on design methods. These offer design insights at a more specic level than standards, and they too can change over time due to advances in science and technology, as well as new analysis methods developed by professional organizations and in academia. Design methods outlined in a manual or textbook from ones engineering class may still work, but chances are they are not the most optimal solution anymore. Having the latest design insights for a particular part or assembly of an aircraft just a few clicks or keystrokes away on ones computer, mobile phone or other device is a huge savings of time and brainpower. They can also suggest which methods and data to use to make the best designs come to life. The third part of that information is component databases, which contain the parts used in products . Given how often the parts might have to be replaced in a piece of equipment or aircraft with a service life that can last for decades, it is optimal to have a system that allows someone to enter a part number and
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nd out whether it is current, and if it is not, then find out what happened to it, what the alternatives might be and who makes them today. Obtaining that information quickly can be critical in many situations, and is thus a tremendous value proposition. You could do that on your own, but you may not have the time to track down information about a company that went out of business 20 years ago, says Alex Sulzer, product marketing manager for IHS. The challenge, then, is to have information resources that can deliver timely and accurate information on standards and regulations, design methods and component databases at ones ngertips, and provide this information consistently over the course of a products entire life cycle. These resources must be able to t into the way the modern engineer does his or her research, which means being globally connected to the proper sites for information and relevant communities of people who can help analyze that information. There are a number of ways to implement a global information resource solution. Integrating it into a rms intranet has proven to be a particularly helpful way, Sulzer says, as that allows employers to customize the information that each employee has access to. For example, says Beetem, if a standard is updated, every engineer who works on a particular product that uses that standard can receive an electronic update notifying him or her that the standard has changed. This means engineers dont have to spend time tracking down such changes individually. We have experts that understand these industries and their requirements, and who build products and processes that complement them and help people get the information they need, covering the entire life cycle of the products that they develop and sustain,

says Beetem. That means giving access to everything from manufacturing drawings to replacement part suppliers and current availability status. Engineers dont look for new updates and changes until they need it, says Sulzer. Whereas we look for those things all the time so we can deliver it when they need to know it. A related useful tool, says Davis, is if a standard changes, you can go in and see what products of yours it impacts. If you have that kind of integration tied to your product lifecycle management, it becomes very easy to research and manage the information that you need.

WHAT A SYSTEM MIGHT LOOK LIKE

How, then, can there be a system that takes advantage of the networking abilities that social media has to offer while providing a quick way to get the information engineers need, or to access a community of people who can point them to that information? IHS has a vision of a fully realized global information resource that resembles a digital version of a bookshelf. The role of IHS solutions is to manage the information and insight on the bookshelf, and to capture and store knowledge on the bookshelf with integrated enterprise and desktop tools that allow the user to find exactly what he or she needs immediately. A modern information resource needs both content and communication tools in order to work optimally. If you go to Google, the search results you get will probably be so broad that it will be hard to tell what is related, says Davis. With a bookshelf system, we can

build much closer relationships between documents. We can also simplify what engineers have to work on every day, so they can be more creative. If they cant be creative and innovative, they are behind the eight ball. Such a setup should ideally blend internal and external environments together, so engineers can, for example, sense how external data might impact internal procedures, Davis adds. This dovetails with how a number of engineers already do research, as many are used to working with enterprise systems that coordinate customer information with data analysis. The bookshelf can include: Journals Technical papers CAD drawings Regulations Tools Parts Materials Standards Customer knowledge Insight from various sources Links to communities of experts

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Reflecting the three ways in which essential information is segmented, IHS has organized the information for the modern engineer into suites around the three distinct types of content: standards and regulations, design tools and component databases. The purpose of a standards collection, says Davis, is to blend a number of sources regarding standards and regulations from standbys like ASTM and ISO to more obscure international documents into a single platform to give the engineer peace of mind that he or she has everything he or she needs to know about requirements for a specic project. It can tie together information about standards and

THE SOCIAL NETWORKING ASPECTS:

Immediate access to established partners* (information sources) for the life cycle of the product
*development, suppliers, customers

Established internal and external communication processes including customer knowledge acquisition Focus on improving the efciency of business processes rather than isolated, departmental functions

regulations and the tools to manage them, Davis notes. It offers direct access to documents based on keywords and topics that are input by the engineer. Once the relevant standards have been identified, the engineer can link to workflow tools that can help him or her meet those standards, Davis says. On the enterprise level, firms can decide when to implement the new version of a standard, and reect that in the database as well as maintain the reference to the original. More than 350,000 active and historical documents are available through the collection, including military/federal specications and standards, commercial item descriptions, qualied product lists, military handbooks, MS drawings, naval instructions and directives, Department of Defense directives, NASA documents and FAA documents. Design tools give engineers access to relevant design information from a number of sources in one place, says Davis. Appropriate resources can include technical papers, journals, software, data, a library of current design methods for the discipline and access to experts in the appropriate eld. With these tools, says Davis, not only can engineers come up with design ideas, but the designs can be compared to other designs and prompt feedback from a community of colleagues and experts. These communities can be accessed and facilitated by using the same technologies that make social media click. Traditional collaboration tools that are document-centric are no longer sufficient to drive innovation and productivity, writes Sarrel in his eweek.com article on adapting social networking tools. The ability to leverage voice, video, presence information and instant messaging is a proven enhancement to collaboration. [2] Another benet to the tools is that they can produce mathematical models for the engineer

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automatically, so that they dont have to rewrite the math every time, says Davis. That makes designing and decision-making a lot more effective by reducing the number of iterations needed to arrive at the optimal design or reduce reliance on costly prototypes. Another set of tools can be leveraged pertaining to regulatory compliance, says Davis. Features that can be incorporated include EIATRACK, which deals with electronics-related environmental compliance; Occupational Health Safety Information Service (OHSIS); and AvData, which includes aircraft-related compliance data. How do you comply with regulations in all the different states? How do you comply when you are going to be importing the product into a foreign country with strict environmental regulations? It can be very time-consuming to track down all of that information, but it is so much easier when it can be found on the same platform, says Davis. Another important component of an information resource, says Sulzer, is bill of material management tools. That ensures there is an orderable part number for each part. It works by cataloging every part that has been used in a product and sending out an alert every time the supplier changes or discontinues the part. This way, everyone who is working on the product has the most current information about all the parts, can prioritize issues for resolution, and communicate to team members and suppliers to avoid being caught by surprise when they go to production and nd out that critical parts are obsolete or discontinued. They want to see a notice of an end-of-life part the day the manufacturer issues it, says Sulzer. They do not want to wait to nd out until the day they need the part. By that time, they may be very limited in what they can do, and often nd it very costly to nd an alternative. The sooner you nd out about a potential problem, the less it costs to deal with it.

A good information resource solution can also help prevent firms from using counterfeit parts, Beetem says. Databases should include lists of who is on the governments list of qualied manufacturers, and should be supported by original documentation. The problem with using only the Internet is that you can research different suppliers and think youve found something that works, but theres still a risk that it might be counterfeit, she says. If you have information from a more reliable source, it gives the engineer or buyer a higher degree of condence that they made the right decision.

CONCLUSION
The bottom line is that if engineers have access to systems that produce the required information quickly and help them manage that information over the entire lifecycle of their products, the end result are decisions that will be made quickly, quality that will increase and products that will get to market faster, says Davis. These kinds of systems can change the way we evaluate problems, and help us communicate more effectively across the enterprise and supply chain, he says. Information resources are an integral part of the engineering workow to help solve problems quickly. Information can be structured and accessed in a way that creates efciencies, innovation and a competitive advantage. If these resources are going to be used in a way that makes sense to todays engineers, their formats will have to mimic the most productive aspects of social networking, and to evolve as it evolves.
[1]

Gordon, Leslie, Lets Get Social, Machine Design, May 2009. Sarrel, Matthew, Tapping the Positive from Social Networks for Enterprise Collaboration, www.eweek. com, 11-09-2010. www.ihs.com 8

[2]

irtually every design challenge that an aerospace engineer faces demands a range of information resources to address it successfully. At different points in the process, different information is needed, and global information resources can help manage that. In this example, we will look at how one would nd out information on an aerostructural design problem using some information solutions offered by IHS. The goal is to discover relevant information about the design parameters as quickly as possible. At times, internal collaboration will sufce. Senior staff might be able to hand off knowledge to junior staff, documentation may exist or in-house experience with a similar problem may be available. Suppliers might have information readily available or a new technical journal may have been recently published. Colleagues at other companies may be able to provide insight. But when dealing with military projects, information is often restricted to the public. Data that you need immediately may be difcult to nd, and others may be prevented from sharing it with you. That is where content providers such as IHS can help. If you have a single-source knowledge resource at your fingertips, it can streamline the processes you use to find information. Such a system usually works best when it integrates both external and internal information resources to better match what you need with what is available. Content managed in this way can provide superior accuracy, consistency, currency and completeness. An engineer assigned to a project requiring the design of an aerostructural component could begin by searching for relevant standards. For this task, he or she could use a standards management tool called Standards

Expert to learn about the performance characteristics and tolerances necessary to meet certication requirements. To start, you have to make sure that what you are designing conforms to government and industry regulations and specications, says Alex Sulzer. So much of engineering design depends on reference standards. These are the recipes for how things are best designed in general. It is impossible for an engineer to do his or her job in a meaningful way without insight into the specications and certications that control the development of products in regulated industries. Using Standards Expert to search for relevant specications on design parameters will allow an engineer to document reference specifications and regulations. He or she can then make notes on the most relevant documents related to the system congurations or components, and share those with everyone else in the workow. These les can be maintained in conjunction with his or her project files in order to provide an audit trail. Within the tool, a collaborative community that tracks content and usage has been created, without requiring help from the IT Department. The next step is to work out the broader design issues. Before the conguration can be developed, the engineer has to determine things like the general shape of the piece and how it will be attached to the structure. He or she needs a way to access current knowledge on design theories, methods, technology and materials. An example of an information resource that can help here is IHS Engineering Sciences Data Unit (ESDU). This includes fully developed design tools, validated by industry, academic and professional society experts, which are maintained to reflect the latest technology and research.

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SOLVING AN AEROSTRUCTURAL DESIGN PROBLEM WITH INTEGRATED INFORMATION RESOURCES

irtually every design challenge that an aerospace engineer faces demands a range of information resources to address it successfully. At different points in the process, different information is needed, and global information resources can help manage that. In this example, we will look at how one would nd out information on an aerostructural design problem using some information solutions offered by IHS. The goal is to discover relevant information about the design parameters as quickly as possible. At times, internal collaboration will sufce. Senior staff might be able to hand off knowledge to junior staff, documentation may exist or in-house experience with a similar problem may be available. Suppliers might have information readily available or a new technical journal may have been recently published. Colleagues at other companies may be able to provide insight. But when dealing with military projects, information is often restricted to the public. Data that you need immediately may be difcult to nd, and others may be prevented from sharing it with you. That is where content providers such as IHS can help. If you have a single-source knowledge resource at your fingertips, it can streamline the processes you use to find information. Such a system usually works best when it integrates both external and internal information resources to better match what you need with what is available. Content managed in this way can provide superior accuracy, consistency, currency and completeness. An engineer assigned to a project requiring the design of an aerostructural component could begin by searching for relevant standards. For this task, he or she could use a standards management tool called Standards

Expert to learn about the performance characteristics and tolerances necessary to meet certication requirements. To start, you have to make sure that what you are designing conforms to government and industry regulations and specications, says Alex Sulzer. So much of engineering design depends on reference standards. These are the recipes for how things are best designed in general. It is impossible for an engineer to do his or her job in a meaningful way without insight into the specications and certications that control the development of products in regulated industries. Using Standards Expert to search for relevant specications on design parameters will allow an engineer to document reference specifications and regulations. He or she can then make notes on the most relevant documents related to the system congurations or components, and share those with everyone else in the workow. These les can be maintained in conjunction with his or her project files in order to provide an audit trail. Within the tool, a collaborative community that tracks content and usage has been created, without requiring help from the IT Department. The next step is to work out the broader design issues. Before the conguration can be developed, the engineer has to determine things like the general shape of the piece and how it will be attached to the structure. He or she needs a way to access current knowledge on design theories, methods, technology and materials. An example of an information resource that can help here is IHS Engineering Sciences Data Unit (ESDU). This includes fully developed design tools, validated by industry, academic and professional society experts, which are maintained to reflect the latest technology and research.

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Searching on bolted joints in ESDU returns a number of items, including four entries on different varieties of bolted joints, 13 entries on related products such as lugs and ttings, four entries on relevant methods, and a number of entries on related topics ranging from stress concentration factor distribution to effects of tolerances on load distribution. It also provides links to information on bolted lap joints and bolts, in case they are related. By using this resource, the engineer has built a bridge to a community of experts who can steer him or her on the correct path. It has the same effect as talking to experts he or she knows, but provides relevant information, which is veried by industry experts to be accurate. It is already part of the engineers job to ask others, What do you know about this type of panel assembly? ESDU provides a way to do the asking

CONTENTS OF THE BOOKSHELF

Research Papers Journals Technical Papers Government Standards Industry Standards Regulations Design Data and Methods Parts Catalogs Material Specications Proprietary Data and Practices Technology Forecasts Customer Research

THE ELEMENTS OF AN INFORMATION SOLUTION

Collect and Index Integrate Internal and External Collections Manage Integration with Internal Systems and Applications Provide Enterprise-Wide Access Monitor Currency Manage Updates Track Where-Used

that produces results that are more complete and of higher quality. The third step in the process is performing the engineering, which will determine exactly what parts are needed. If the design piece requires eight bolts that are two inches apart, engineers must gure out what kind of bolts are required for the job, and where they can be found. It is easiest to complete this task if an engineer has an aggregated, normalized and indexed database at his or her disposal. One solution is the IHS Fasteners database, in which an engineer can search for parts by reference standard or part number. That mitigates the risk of choosing a part that does not conform to relevant standards or is inappropriate for the design. Its a different program from the same source the Standards Development Organization drawing on the same information, Sulzer says. Previous research gives the engineer the reference standard numbers or part numbers of the bolted joints that are appropriate for the project. Rather than asking around for recommendations or making a days worth of phone calls to suppliers, the engineer has conducted a search in mere minutes that has a greater chance of producing the optimal result. By using a managed information resource across the phases of product development, the engineer has saved a signicant amount of time and gotten a much higher caliber of information compared to traditional ways of doing research. He or she has been able to accomplish this because he or she had access to resources from a single content provider that connects many different documents and experts. By saving time and increasing the quality of the nal result, the bottom-line savings achieved for the rm have likely been signicant. These kinds of solutions not only make individual engineers more efcient and more effective, but they also streamline design projects and greatly reduce the risk of failure. And that has a signicant impact on their employers return on investment and bottom line.
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