Episode 3: OHB's Digital Evolution: Transforming Aerospace PLM with Lucía Núñez Núñez

In this episode of the Share PLM Podcast, we are joined by Lucía Núñez Núñez, the PLM Project Manager at OHB Information Technology Services GmbH. Lucía studied aeronautical engineering at the Polytechnic University in Madrid, Spain. Since then, she has held various positions within the Aerospace industry.

In this episode, we are discussing:

⚉ From configuration management to PLM in the aerospace industry
⚉ Transitioning from paper to digital systems
⚉ Implementing ARAS as a Flexible PLM Solution
⚉ Customization, external support, and  overcoming implementation challenges
⚉ The role of digital twins, 3D CAD models, and PLM implementation
⚉ Strategies for organizational change and PLM system adoption
⚉ Benefits and ROI: Demonstrating PLM’s Value to Management
⚉ Benefits of PLM vs ERP in an engineering-to-order company
⚉ Collaboration with suppliers and addressing space industry limitations
⚉ Navigating workforce adaptability in digital transformation
⚉ Integrating simulation models into the digital workflow
⚉ Bridging model-based systems engineering and PLM
⚉ Overcoming resistance and driving user adoption in PLM across projects
⚉ The unexpected success of a PLM system implementation in the aerospace industry


CONNECT WITH LUCÍA:
Linkedin: https://shorturl.at/BXrPp

CONNECT WITH SHARE PLM:
Website: https://shareplm.com/ 

Join us every month to listen to fascinating interviews, where we cover a wide array of topics, from actionable tips, to personal experiences, to strategies that you can implement into your PLM strategy.

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Transcript

[00:00:12] Beatriz González:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Share PLM podcast. My is Beatriz González, and I'm CEO of Share PLM. I will be hosting today's episode, as always, together with my lovely cohost, Jos Voskuil.

[00:00:25] Jos Voskuil:
Bravo.

[00:00:27] Beatriz González:
I'm very excited because we have a very special guest. It is Lucía. Lucía and I have been working in the same university and she's now currently PLM product owner. So Lucia, welcome, welcome to the podcast. And please, could you introduce yourself?

[00:00:44] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I'm also very excited to participate. My name is Lucía Núñez. I've been working in actually in Germany for a long time and in particular in the company that I'm working now for several years. I'm working at OHP which is a space company and before my journey started, I worked in space projects as configuration manager, the classical exploration projects, satellite projects things like that.

Sounds very exciting, but sometimes you just work in front of a computer as anybody else. But, yeah, after that, I started my, as I say, my PLM journey in 2018 and since then that has been my role. I'm PLM product owner and actually, since for a few months now, I also manage the implementation projects.

[00:01:41] Jos Voskuil:
Interesting. You starting from configuration management Lucía because many people think that the PLM is configuration management. Maybe you can explain us what is the PLM you're doing and how it's different than the configuration management?

[00:01:56] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Let me start from the, the beginning, the configuration management that I was doing was pretty much on paper. That means lots of Excel, lots of minutes of meeting lots of let's say juggling different kinds of data that were just on paper. We didn't have a database per see.

We didn't have any kind of PLM until we introduced the PLM system in our company. So yeah, you're right. The PDM is very much type of configuration management of the data and I think that's one of the things that actually caught my attention and actually also I had as an advantage when I started this project, because I knew the needs for configuration management and I tried to apply them in the PDM.

[00:02:41] Beatriz González:
So, that would be an advice that you can tell the listeners that it's easier when you first do your work in kind of paper, and then you are prepared to implement the solution in a system.

[00:02:52] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
For sure, for sure. I mean, that's kind of a learning, I mean, one of the things that otherwise I would have mentioned later, whatever you have, if you start on paper and you do, like, the really hard work once and you have your process very, I mean, you know how it is, you know, how hard it is and where it lacks.

That's the perfect starting point for digitalizing it or turning it into a workflow or some other process in PDM or in PLM.

[00:03:17] Jos Voskuil:
Right, When when we had pre-discussion Lucía you mentioned uh you are implementing ARAS and for my personal experience with ARAS, it's a very flexible solution. That means you need to have a methodology and skills yourself to implement it. I think this is one of the systems that if you don't have the methodology, you can become crazy like I experienced in my, my smart team past.

Can you tell us something how you implemented the system? Did you start from certain methodologies?

[00:03:46] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah, maybe I can also start by why ARAS was very appealing to us as a system and it was mainly because ARAS as opposed to other PLM systems is evolving constantly. It's also just embracing customization and embracing the differences in the different businesses, which we didn't feel was that way for the other BLM systems that we looked at as space industry.

We have this kind of, I don't want to say it's an ecologistic thing, but probably partially that we think we're a very, very unique industry. And therefore everything that applies for manufacturing industry, series production, et cetera, doesn't apply to us because we only do prototypes and therefore we need something very, very special.

So that's kind of the mentality with which we went into the project, but ARAS has served exactly what we expected, which was this flexible platform that we can adapt because in our business, every project is different and that's, I mean, apart from being from the whole talk of being unique, et cetera, I agree that every project because every mission is different, has completely different requirements, requires a different setup of the project.

That being said, when we implemented ARAS, we actually did it with an external provider. So an external development team. We didn't develop everything on our own. Of course I visited, I mean, me and my colleagues, we went to the trainings and we felt like gods after, after visiting those trainings and said, okay, we're doing it on our own.

But no, I mean in the end, we still do some configuration ourselves, but mainly we actually hire external developers for all our customizations. And I must say we've done a bunch of customization in the past 5 years. Yup.

[00:05:35] Jos Voskuil:
Yeah, I would expect. I mean, if you want to implement a business, you have to customize or configure the system that it works the way you want. And coming back to the uniqueness of your business, I mean, aerospace, a lot of time is sitting into a certification and then the thing has to fly for 30 years where you send your prototype in space and never lands. Or did it ever land one of your prototypes? Did it come back or, uh?

[00:06:02] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
I mean, they're not supposed to their program to just burn,

[00:06:07] Jos Voskuil:
Okay.

[00:06:08] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Actually, in most cases, but yeah, you're right. I mean, that's kind of the thing. It's not something that you're going to monitor the maintenance after, or the service in any, in any massive way, but just focusing on maybe the couple of software updates that you can send from earth and maybe the couple of maneuvers that your propulsion system still has still fuel to do because otherwise, yeah, there's not much more than you can do.

Yeah, that's you mentioned it. That's kind of the specialty of maybe not only the industry, but also the company that I am in. There are not many space integrators as we are called in Europe, but all of these types of companies. We don't manufacture anything we also don't, I mean, we're also close to the product. It's not like we don't touch the product, but our exact field in this business is to actually build or assemble the satellite together or the spacecraft, so to say.

That means we, I mean, and that's why the whole configuration management and data management comes from all the different sources of the different, different providers that send all the units and all of their subsystems to us.

And then we assemble in our green rooms the product together.

[00:07:21] Jos Voskuil:
And when you say we assemble together, I'm, I'm always thinking then, are you already doing everything virtual in advance, like the modern digital twin, uh, concepts, are you working with 3D or is it still a lot of traditiona drawings and then assemble on the workshop.

[00:07:38] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Well that's actually a good starting point to actually also come back to the loop of why we started doing PLM. Because of course, we work with 3D and with CAD models, et cetera. And of course, digital twin is a buzzword here and it kind of motivates lots of the activities.

But also, we came from definitely from a world of paper. This means, and actually, sometimes they still are like, I don't know, a zero papers that are put on panels in, uh, in the clean room and just highlighted things on, I don't know, some kind of, yeah, highlight or whatever.

And but uh the actual trigger for the PLM project or the PLM implementation in our company was coming from the construction or the mechanical design department. They were the ones that saw the need of managing their CAD models in a more efficient way of getting rid of the paper. I mean, having an A0 paper trail over the company, just carrying it from one office to the other to get signatures was just not efficient anymore and meant a lot of, uh, yeah, and also not sustainable.

Those days, they were the pushers from the system and then it was a tandem between, actually the configuration management department plus the mechanical design department.

[00:08:56] Beatriz González:
And Lucia, then, coming from this industry where they were used to A0 papers, you will say that, yes, the people were asking for PLM, but how do you manage this transition and the deployment of the, of the system? What strategies did you follow? What worked and what didn't work? And also, was it in Germany only or….Yes. Okay.

[00:09:17] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah, so big question, big area to cover exactly. So this company has two main sites, one in Bremen and the other one very close to Munich. And  those were our first, let's say, focus for the first implementation. Now we're rolling out in other sites, but in principle, those were our two, let's say business centers.

So we have also help from external consultants to actually transition to the PLM, because as you say, there's a group that is pushing very much for it, but that's only a very small group of people in a company that it's in the thousands. So, we used a lot of strategies, I must say. A lot of different things.

The first thing that we did and actually helped us throughout the implementation, and we still keep it and we still nurture it, is creating an army of or a network of key users and people with responsibility in the company, but also with passion about the PLM system and who also were responsible and we transfer that responsibility to them of rolling this out in their departments of  making people aware of it, etc.

We try to try to cascade it from above so that it would just go down the different departments and of course, we have positive and negative experiences with some of these, but I must say that in general, it has been the thing that has helped us most.

I mean, the local, if you locate those people that are so passionate about becoming more efficient about using something new about seeing the positive things and using this new thing and not complaining about it, then you have a niche and you should use those people to as ambassadors to just convince or about the good things that this PLM is going to bring the company.

[00:11:10] Jos Voskuil:
So here I hear a typical story of a kind of a bottom up approach. People, uh, asking from 2D to 3D people asking for the, the PLM. How were you able to get approval for the implementation, the budget, and if you're looking back, what are the, the benefits that you can really mention to your, your management?

[00:11:30] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
In the very, very beginning, I actually wasn't there in the project. So the very, very the seeds of the project were it was approved that there go was going to be a PLM system and it was going to be implemented.

[00:11:41] Beatriz González:
When was it Lucia, when was it?

[00:11:45] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
That was in 2017. There was, um optimization and process optimization department in the company that focused on many different things. And one of these things was, okay, analyzing if PDM or PLM was the right step for the company. So, they actually took an external consultant that accompanied different departments and different people areas in the company projects in the company.

I mean, we have a, a matrix organization. So you have both worlds, the department world and the project world. Not necessarily always with aligned interests. So exactly, they went over for a year. They kind of followed up all the individuals and came back with the needs from the different departments.

And the confirmation that the PLM system was the right step to to take. And then on top of that, same as in other companies, we have a management board that once they are convinced, they also allow for this investment project to go on. Yeah.

And regarding the benefits that we have seen in the past years, I mean, since we have done so many different areas that we have rolled out and customized. And, again, since every project is different and every uses different parts of the system, I'd say we've become more efficient than just started actually to manage our bombs and bits of material, bits of material way better than in the past.

I mean, again, we come from a paper wall. So, almost anything is better than that. But we also have SAP. So just working, I mean, having that landscape between our, what we call PDM system and SAP working together and being able to track our product in a complete different way with links to documentation, things like that is the most beneficial thing compared to today's paper.

[00:13:40] Jos Voskuil:
Okay. So you are triggering me. You're saying we're using SAP where one of my statements is always if you are an engineering to order company, the most important thing is the engineering process in all the logistics afterwards. You do it only once. Where do you see that the biggest benefits? Is it on the PLM side or on the ERP side in your company?

[00:14:05] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Since I am part of the PLM system and with ERP, we just have, let's say, an interface, I can just vouch for the benefits on the PLM or the PDM side.

You mentioned also engineering processes. I mean, for sure, all of our engineering processes, or at least the ones that we're onboarding and onboarding coming to the PLM landscape. And in particular in our so called PDM system that is done by ERAS and we leave everything that is logistics to ERP. But, yeah, the biggest benefit in the PLM system itself has been, in my opinion, getting rid of a lot of paper and everything that comes with it. I mean, it's not just the raw thing of, okay, getting rid of paper in clean rooms and in desks, et cetera.

But what it entails, I mean, the time that people were losing just walking around and gathering signatures, the time that people were losing, just reprinting stuff, just reading whatever somebody had written there.

[00:15:04] Beatriz González:
As you were saying that, uh, you are not manufacturing, you are mainly assembling. How are you managing the collaboration with the suppliers? It's more in the ERP, in the PDM, or you have another platform to manage all that relationships?

[00:15:20] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Let's say the collaboration there is very limited at the moment, it's changing. The space industry is changing as other industries, of course, and it's evolving. But until now, collaboration was very, very limited with the suppliers, providers, et cetera.

We had very strict contracts and very strict relationships with them such that we just couldn't share certain information. We just couldn't onboard them with, Hey, I don't know, come over let's all work together in this platform. There's nothing, or there wasn't anything like that. Again, we're moving towards that.

The space industry is moving towards core teams and collaboration teams that will all work in the same platform. It's been a topic for the past years and months. Actually, whenever we have a project that has a bigger core team,  Okay, how do we get them on board? How do we give them access  to certain things? But surprisingly. It has worked before without any kind of common platform.

[00:16:18] Beatriz González:
Mm hmm.

[00:16:19] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Which meant of course a lot of data on paper that was sent to, I don't know, a clean room to the projects. In some projects, they even worked still to this day with, like, CDs and USB sticks where stuff is being sent. Yeah. It's surprising how sometimes the security also limits your creativity or, or enhances, boosts your creativity there.

[00:16:45] Jos Voskuil:
Did the transition from documents or paper to digital also help you with the workforce? How old is the workforce in your company and what are their preferred ways of working?

[00:16:55] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
There's everything right? There's the young people who are passionate about changing and about trying new things. And the people that are more, I mean, I don't want to say old, they're just more used to certain ways of working and suddenly you tell them they should change.

Anyway, what we kind of our aim from the beginning was to try to change mainly in the very first years, as minimum as possible, as little as possible, exactly. So as little as possible meaning that we would get a process as it is today, see how it could be represented in PDM. I mean, this exercise we do today as well, but we are, let's say, we allow ourselves, certain more freedoms because we have seen now we are mature enough that we can actually improve and optimize the process when we are at the same time that we are digitalizing it.

But back then we tried to stay as close as possible to the original process, which meant also usually deviating from the standard process, a lot of customization, but that's how we kind of won those people over.

[00:18:00] Jos Voskuil:
And besides 3D is, is model based approaches. Is this already a next step? So not only the CAD model, but also connecting with simulation models.

[00:18:11] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah, I mean, let's say it's not very, very near next step we're doing. So actually we're extending more. We started with mechanical cats. We're focusing now more on electronic cat systems simulation, the whole simulation area. We’ve been I mean, we haven't completely touch or lost touch with them in the past years. But it's been like, more and more background thing that we haven't approached yet just because we haven't found the right solution, to be honest, until now.

I mean, we haven't found anything that improves the current pain points that they have, which is just being able to relate other simulations to the correct version that they're doing. This whole input and output of the simulation is currently the issue.

[00:18:58] Jos Voskuil:
Yeah, I think that's one of the big challenging transition set in the PLM domain and to go through this model based approach and then it's no longer a system, it's a network of systems working together on models and on data.

[00:19:11] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yup and we use model-based systems engineering as well, but as of now, we don't have any direct interface with our PLM system. It's just a supporting process, so to say it. I agree with you at some point this landscape encompasses all engineering processes. So they should be on boarded in a certain way. But exactly to what extent what we are yet to define.

[00:19:35] Jos Voskuil:
Yeah it usually comes when you want to implement a software and digital twins and you want to simulate what's happening in a virtual world.

[00:19:44] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah and the thing is in our digital twin, I think we all know it was one big thing back in the seventies and in the eighties and later to have a digital twin also for space because you couldn't know what was happening with the exact spacecraft with the robot, with whatever you were sending out.

But at the same time also, we don't really service it. It's enough for, at least in the industry, it has been enough to be able to represent the electronics and software part digitally. So to have a digital twin on that part, so that we can foresee what could happen with certain software updates of our maneuvers, et cetera, but we don't work with a full capable digital twin right now.

[00:20:31] Beatriz González:
And how would you describe the adoption in the system itself? Do you find resistance or it's mainly adopted?

[00:20:40] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
So, every project that started in this industry, we work with projects. They are our main business, right? And projects last over several years from 5 to 10 or 15. Whenever a new project started since the early implementation of PLM, they are on boarded and they work in the system.

So they all work in the system, which doesn't mean that there is no resistance because of course there's always these, I don't know, this performance issue there, or there's always these, this is not how I used to do it before, et cetera. So we are very closely monitoring that we actually, although I belong to IT, we are very close to the business in terms of regularly knowing what's the, what are the issues regularly understanding? Okay. What are the priorities from the parade? Where are they having issues?

In most cases, what I can say has worked best was when we had a very, very strong and. Let's say, well prepared and passionate team of people that of key users in an area, then that area usually has no resistance. They understand everything.

I mean, it sounds very black and white, like, of course, that's what you would expect, but not necessarily. I mean, there are other areas where you have different characters and people that are more on the complaining side and people that are more on the, even though they should actually support the system openly, but definitely we have lots of very good ambassadors in the company that have helped us just overcome every curveball that we have received.

[00:22:19] Beatriz González:
That's very good. Yeah, that they trust you at the end. So when you gain the trust of the of the users, you are there, maybe some things are not working, but they know that there are some team supporting them. So that's very good.

[00:22:34] Jos Voskuil:
To get an impression of the scale. How many people are working with the PLM system as users or as consumers?

[00:22:42] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
A thousand users. Yeah.

[00:22:44] Jos Voskuil:
Oh, that's a, that's a big implementation.

[00:22:47] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Yeah, yeah. I mean our companies, I mean, I don't know, 1,500, I would have to check exactly between 1,500 and 2,000 in total. So, yeah, it's a lot of users, mainly also because only users that are actually working in a project, which doesn't mean any other support departments from the company, but just people that are actively working in projects are there.

I also forgot to say, one of the things that has helped us in these past years is also to implement some continuous improvement process. We introduced that we involve our users to hear what they have to say about improvements. We have like steering boards, et cetera, where we analyze the benefit of all the different improvements so that they also see that whatever they find and whatever they request has also it's also implemented eventually.

[00:23:39] Jos Voskuil:
Okay. Yeah, good. I think we're reaching almost the end of the of discussion. Otherwise it gets too long. We could speak much longer on the details. My favorite question at the end is always is experience is what you get when you don't get what you expect. And my question is, what is your biggest experience so far?

[00:24:00] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Okay, I'm going to end on a positive experience.

[00:24:02] Jos Voskuil:
Of course.

[00:24:04] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Nobody was expecting it, but it happened exactly. I must say to summarize, we were a very small team within the company. We actually, it was two people of us starting this project and we grew. And of course, we are up to eight actually right now.

We had a small support from external companies, but we managed to. And against all odds and unexpectedly to actually, successfully bring several releases life of this PLM system of understanding the business and what they needed at each moment of actually changing our way of working and moving to an agile way of working, which, uh, I haven't mentioned, but it would, it would be another topic for another podcast.

[00:24:48] Beatriz González:
Yeah.

[00:24:49] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
And all that within 5 years reaching along our big base of users. So actually, in the middle of the project, we were very shocked that we made it actually. And if you had asked me five years ago where are you going to make it? I mean, only two people starting to people with expectations to grow just overthrow the whole, the whole company.

[00:25:09] Jos Voskuil:
Okay. Yes.

[00:25:11] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
I would have doubted it and here we are, so that's my biggest experience, my biggest takeaway.

[00:25:16] Beatriz González:
Congratulations.

[00:25:17] Jos Voskuil:
Yeah. Great experience. Thank you Lucia for your uh sharing your PLM journey it was impressive. Thank you.

[00:25:24] Lucía Núñez Núñez:
Thank you very much.

[00:25:25] Beatriz González:
Thank you very much Jos and thank you very much Lucia and thank you to our listeners. If you want us to target some topic in the next episode please leave us a comment.