Conception d'un outil d'aide à la planification de changements d'ingénierie en milieu aéronautique

Abstract

Obsolescence is a phenomenon that is increasingly affecting the aeronautic sector. By increasing the concentration of electronic components, it is becoming increasingly common for a supplier to announce the end of the production or the modification of the supplied product. There are various ways to respond to an obsolescence case but the modification or replacement of the obsolete component, in other words an engineering change, is the most widespread as a long-term solution. In the case of aeronautics, certification constraints and component complexity tend to make engineering change projects substantial, leaving little room for maneuver before stock-out if the notification does not arrive sufficiently early. The concept of planning is thus central as it allows anticipating the potential delays which can induce production disruptions. Due to the large number of certification constraints imposed on the aeronautics industry, these processes must be formalized. The deliverables to be realized during this process depend on the considered engineering change. This work objective is to design planning assisting tool for engineering change in the aeronautic industry. Using the characteristics of the change, the tool identifies the deliverables to be supplied during the process. Two (2) sub-objectives have been identified. The first is to model the engineering change process in the case of obsolescence. The second is to build a tool to assist in the planning of these projects. The methodology adopted to address this problem is that dictated by design science, where objectives are translated into artifacts and these artifacts are designed through design cycles. A choice of modeling language of the process was made to meet the needs identified in a need analysis and to take into account the specificities of this process in the context of obsolescence in the aeronautics industry. From this representation of the engineering change process, the applicability criteria of the project deliverables were analyzed and integrated into a planning aid tool. The final tool is evaluated by future users as well as a case study. The results show the relevance of the tool in the engineering change planning activity as well as the reliability of the identification of project deliverables. This work contributes to identification of the link between the engineering changes and their process.

Date	20 Feb 2017
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Yvan Beauregard (Supervisor) & Marc Paquet (Co-supervisor)