A Novel Approach for Technology Development: A Success Story

The composites development team at Bombardier Aerospace has pushed the Integrated Product Development Team to a new level. The team has been created outside the business priorities and was partially funded by a provincial government initiative to create a greener aircraft. A dedicated R&D team can reduce the gap between the different disciplines by encouraging them to work as one entity and rapidly develop high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and high Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) solutions. Additionally, the interactions between the groups create a harmonization of the development philosophy and a sharing of the building block approach. This leads to a significant cost and lead time reduction in the coupon, element and detail testing. The constitution of the team also has a great impact on the level of expertise and the flexibility to adjust to new demands. The team has built through the years an entire and complete external partner network that helps the team in specific subject matters. Knowledge management within the team, technology development and sharing become critical aspects as the projects grow. To ensure that all the necessary knowledge is captured throughout the development, a rigorous process is implemented in the IPDT team. The process to identify and close knowledge gaps requires a knowledge capture technique, named A3 process, adapted to the R&D needs. The A3 is used in a loop approach where specific sub-subjects of a project are each tracked with this methodology.