AEROSPACE & DEFENSE

BELL HELICOPTER
Accelerating Design Collaboration and
Innovation with 3DS Solutions and ENOVIA

Bell Helicopter 505 Jet Ranger X was designed

and manufactured with Dassault Systèmes’ V6
technology, including ENOVIA, CATIA, DELMIA
and 3DVIA.
 Challenge:
As part of its Business Systems Modernization
initiative, Bell Helicopter sought to establish
one source of information that could be shared resource planning), CAMS (complex assembly and
enterprise-wide and with its suppliers and partners. manufacturing system) and Primavera (scheduling and earned
value information).
Solution: The first BSM GoLive, in 2011, included Dassault Systèmes’
Bell chose to upgrade to ENOVIA V6R2013x to ENOVIA V6 and CATIA V6, with an implementation of CAMS
manage all of its aircraft and parts data, from interface. In 2013, it launched SAP with enhanced interface
contracts all the way down to capturing the to ENOVIA. Bell also created a one-way integration between
delivered aircraft as a bill of material. Primavera and ENOVIA.
Benefits: “At Bell, we’ve been going through many cycles of system
ENOVIA V6R2013x has provided a single, upgrades through the BSM journey,” Marsh says. In the latest
enterprise-wide solution with increased visibility cycle of the continuing BSM effort, Bell chose to upgrade from
to information, improved interoperability with ENOVIA V6R2011 to ENOVIA V6R2013x to capitalize on new
CATIA V6 and enhanced stability that Bell’s large functionality, he explains.
assemblies require, improving productivity and “V6R2013x brings improved interoperability between ENOVIA
quality between engineering and the shop floor. and CATIA V6 to Bell,” says Marsh. “Behaviors in ENOVIA can
now be replicated in CATIA, so that you have one platform.”
The solution delivers the enhanced stability Bell’s large
assemblies require. “We have very large bill of materials
and complex trees that are integrated between CATIA and
Bell Helicopter, an icon in the aviation industry, was the first ENOVIA – and that integration is bidirectional,” Marsh explains.
company to obtain certification for a commercial helicopter, “V6R2011 simply could not perform all of the actions that were
and has been a mainstay of the US defense industry since required to synchronize those bills of materials. CATIA BOM to
World War II. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, Bell’s ENOVIA BOM is a huge benefit.”
mission is to “change the way the world flies with superior The upgrade also positions Bell well for the future. “Our
vertical lift that saves lives, preserves freedom and provides motivation to upgrade to V6R2013x definitely centered around
customers with exceptional value.” Since 1935, the company the need to get on a more modern architecture so that we’re on
has delivered more than 35,000 aircraft to its customers a go-forward path to upgrade to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform
around the world. at a later date,” Cloud says.
To ensure Bell can continue to deliver on its customers’
requirements with speed and reliability, the company launched
its Business Systems Modernization (BSM) initiative in 2008.
“Because ENOVIA V6 is the
One main driver was to replace Bell’s aging legacy systems, primary for most of the product
some of which had been in use as many as 35 years, with more
modern, integrated solutions. data and sends it to CAMS and
BUSINESS SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION SAP as the secondary systems, we are
BSM aims to deliver more flexible and user-friendly innovation seeing an increase in the quality, with
and collaboration systems not only to Bell’s engineers, but
across its entire organization, and for use in its interactions fewer errors created from data conversions
with suppliers and partners. “We needed to leave behind the
technology of the 70s and move into the 21st century to
or human input, of what is communicated
be more responsive and lower our time to market with new from engineering to the shop floor.”
products,” says Charles Marsh, Chief of Design Tools and
Standards at Bell Helicopter. — Jeff Cloud, Manager of Systems Engineering and Engineering
Operations, Bell Helicopter
One key element of the BSM effort has been to establish one
source of information that can be shared across the company.
“We chose ENOVIA from Dassault Systèmes (3DS), not as an
HIGH PERFORMANCE PLATFORM
engineering tool or even just as a CAD data manager, but to
manage all of our aircraft and product data, from contracts Bell’s need for a more modern architecture and high-
all the way down to capturing the delivered aircraft as a bill performance solution are easy to understand when you
of material in ENOVIA,” says Jeff Cloud, Manager of Systems consider the scope of its projects. “ENOVIA holds information
Engineering and Engineering Operations for Bell. for all of Bell’s active products,” says Marsh. “We currently
have 11 active and three development programs all living on
To date, Marsh says, Bell has integrated four major systems: the V6 technology. We have more than 14 terabytes of data
ENOVIA V6 (global collaboration), SAP for ERP (enterprise that we’ve captured and retain to document our parts and
products, so the 13x implementation was huge.”
ENOVIA serves all of Bell’s sites around the world. Workers from
India and Singapore to Mexico, the United States and Canada
all interact and consume or author information on the system.
“We have more than 6,500 ENOVIA users worldwide,” Marsh
explains. “And V6R2013x serves a broad range of different
roles at Bell – from people writing contracts, design and
manufacturing engineers, and quality engineers to authorities
like the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and suppliers
that provide us hardware and components for aircraft
manufacturing. They all use ENOVIA to access our product
information – whether it is CAD design, computer-aided
manufacturing, planning instructions, certification documents
or requirements – we carry the whole gamut of the company
on ENOVIA.”
Bell chose to migrate all of its legacy systems into ENOVIA. “All
of our products, parts and documents have been migrated into
ENOVIA V6,” says Marsh. “This is true for legacy programs like
CATIA V4 and new development programs that are being done in
CATIA V6 – both types of product data coexist in ENOVIA. Legacy
CAD data lives in the CAD platform it was developed in, but all
of the parts data and documents merge together in ENOVIA.”
Marsh says that when it makes business sense to either create
a new kit or a new product derivative of a CATIA V4 product,
then Bell migrates that data to the CATIA V6 platform so it can Aft Fuse for joining and drilling
leverage the downstream reduction in time to market that the with 3DVIA Composer
CATIA V6 platform offers. “We’re doing that, for example on
the 412, but only in the areas that it makes sense,” he says.
“We won’t do it wholesale, however, if there is no benefit for
that non-recurring cost.”

MOVING TOWARD ZERO FILES

Although Bell’s primary users of ENOVIA are its engineers and
manufacturing engineers, it truly is an enterprise-wide solution
for the company. “The engineers are in there, and they’re
probably some of the more prolific users,” says Cloud. “But
we manage our aircraft and our product data from contracts to
certification, so our contract organization all the way down to
capturing the approved bill of material happens in ENOVIA –
from the beginning to the end.”
It is a ZERO files approach that is beginning to take hold at
Bell. “All of our documents are now more like objects,” Cloud
explains. “We have them all in one place and all of the approvals
are in ENOVIA. There is one place for everyone in the company Fuselage Assembly with CATIA V6
to go to find information. They don’t have to ask someone else
to go find it…it’s not locked in someone’s drawer.”
A large number of file types once juggled by the company’s
employees such as parts lists and bills of material have been
moved to ENOVIA. “Those are now the engineering bill of
material in ENOVIA, and the parts have metadata attached
to them,” Cloud says. “The notes are metadata. The usage
is metadata. Where the part is built is metadata. So we pull
information out of ENOVIA and feed it downstream to CAMS
and SAP to execute and build parts in plants in Mexico, Canada
and Texas.”
Bell is moving away from a time when people asked their TURNING PARTS INTO AIRCRAFT
colleagues to send them a file or Excel spreadsheet of parts for the ENOVIA’s Engineering Central application allows Bell to include
latest aircraft, Cloud says. “You don’t have to do that now. It’s in metadata to feed the downstream needs for the manufacturing
WIP and it’s visible in ENOVIA for everybody in the company to of its aircraft.
see. So we’re transitioning to a data-driven architecture at Bell.”
“We start with the engineering bill of material (BOM) in
But Cloud stresses that it is more than just visibility, he calls Engineering Central. We have a planning BOM that consumes
ENOVIA Bell’s ‘one source of the truth.’ “Of course ENOVIA can the engineering BOM and defines the manufacturing sequence
be an engineering-only tool, but we have it for everyone. It’s and parts necessary to build certain assemblies specific to the
at the ‘headwaters,’ as we say, of product design. ENOVIA is plant where they will be built,” Cloud says.
where everything begins and it has provided an enterprise-wide
ability to understand where information is and that it is the The planning BOM passes out of ENOVIA into CAMS and SAP,
most up-to-date version. We can feel certain we’re not working where it becomes the manufacturing bill of material or MBOM
with outdated information.” that will actually drive the execution of the assembly in the
shop. The same kind of passing down of information happens
CAPTURING REQUIREMENTS with the work instructions.
Bell uses V6R2013x to manage all of its product data – from
requirements and 3D models to documents and drawings.
“Anything that is required to certify or manage an aircraft is “V6R2013x brings improved
housed or lives in ENOVIA,” says Marsh.
Cloud says, for example, that Bell utilizes systems engineering
interoperability between
to capture its requirements and stores those in ENOVIA. “We ENOVIA and CATIA V6 to Bell.
capture requirements from our customers, from regulatory
agencies and from our own internal functions, including design Behaviors in ENOVIA can now be
and manufacturing engineering.”
replicated in CATIA, so that you have one
Cloud says Bell must capture the requirements, understand
what they are, make them visible to the people who must platform.”
design to those requirements and ensure the requirements will
— Charles Marsh, Chief of Design Tools and
result in a quality product. “Capturing requirements drives the
Standards, Bell Helicopter
quality of the designs of the aircraft that we create, and helps
Bell achieve first-time or near-first-time success on product
deliveries that meet our customers’ needs.”
Bell’s engineers use the features in ENOVIA’s Variant Configuration “So, planning and manufacturing consume the 3D data we have
Central application to break down the aircraft system by system, created on the engineering side,” Cloud explains. “They create
define each of those breakdowns with a feature, and decompose interactive work instructions (IWIs) from the data that shows
the features into subsystems all the way down to configuration the assemblers how to put the aircraft together or create certain
items of self-contained assemblies, Cloud says. “At that time, we assemblies, and those pictures or movies are incorporated into
can tie requirements for the design to those configuration items. CAMS, so that as the operators are performing the operations,
In this way, engineering has a system-wide, traceable view of they have the list of steps they’re executing. They also have a
what the aircraft must do.” visible picture of what it should look like, or a movie that shows
the steps to follow.”
Manufacturing engineers can then take that feature structure
and ‘remix ‘ it to match the build sequence of the aircraft using Bell uses 3DVIA Composer from 3DS to create IWIs from
manufacturing features, Cloud explains. “So they consume all CATIA V6 data to allow its manufacturing teams and suppliers
of the configuration items that were created by the engineers to visualize and inspect parts. “The 3DVIA file is, in essence,
in the logical feature tree into a manufacturing feature tree a drawing that is a rotatable, zoomable 3D view of the
that represents the build sequence of the aircraft. Then, that information with all the dimensions necessary to inspect the
manufacturing sequence or structure is used to create the part,” Cloud explains.
engineering bill of materials. The result is an engineering bill Bell’s IWIs have replaced text-based assembly instructions
of material that, rather than being organized in a traditional and snapshots of 2D drawings. 3D instructions ease
way around system decomposition or functional architecture, communications problems and eliminate language barriers
is aligned around the way we’re going to build the aircraft.” with manufacturing plants in different locations around the
Bell also is capturing its options and kits in the feature world. “By eliminating text and using symbols to represent
definition. “We create inclusion rules that tell our marketing operations such as drilling, gluing, sealing and clamping,” Cloud
and sales teams working in SAP which options are compatible says, “we don’t have to spend time translating our instructions
with others that are ordered by our customers,” Cloud adds. “It into multiple languages.”
really helps keep everyone on the same page.” To share IWIs and other information such as design data and
process and material specifications needed to build parts and
components, Bell has set up portals for its suppliers to access
ENOVIA. “They interact with what we call a technical data
package that contains the information necessary for the part,
and they extract that into their own systems,” Cloud says.

UPGRADE EXPERTISE
The biggest challenge for Bell was to carry out the V6R2013x
upgrade in such a way that it did not interrupt its business.
“Having systems down, especially like ENOVIA that we rely
on every day, is significant,” Marsh stresses. “So, our first
challenge was to reduce that down time.”
Marsh said after a positive experience with Dassault Systèmes
Industry Services (DSIS) for modernizing and customizing its
systems with V6R2011, it made sense to partner with DSIS
Interactive Work Instruction
again when it came time to upgrade to the V6R2013x release.
with 3DVIA Composer
“They helped customize V6R2011 to meet Bell’s needs, so who
else would know better what those needs were when it came
to upgrading to V6R2013x?” he said. “DSIS ensured that the
enhancements we made to V6R2011 translated one-for-one
into V6R2013x, so that we could continue to do business just
as we were used to doing it.”
“Using V6R2013x out of the box works for startup companies
that don’t have existing data, but at Bell we have about 14
terabytes of data,” said Marsh. “We’ve got a large investment
in the aircraft that we’re managing with ENOVIA, and we had
to ensure that all of the product definition information migrated
correctly and functioned properly.”
Bell had a very lengthy migration path with more than 1,400
steps which DSIS helped to orchestrate. “DSIS provided beta
testing and developmental code validation on the Dassault
side,” Marsh said. “We also brought it in-house onto our
development server with Bell data, and they validated that code
and that the fixes worked on our system prior to giving it to Bell
to test in our test environment.” Apply Trade Compliance and
DSIS also sat on Bell’s executive steering committee to help IP Ownership in ENOVIA
guide decisions made throughout the migration process. “They
provided resources to mitigate problems that occurred during
the migration and a direct pipeline to 3DS R&D to communicate
our requirements and needs so those could be met with the
solution delivered,” Marsh says. “The DSIS involvement with
the V6R2013x upgrade was critical to the success of the
implementation. I personally believe without DSIS engaged,
this implementation still would not have occurred. They
reduced the time and ensured the functionality was in place
and that the product delivered was high quality.”

LESSONS LEARNED
Bell has learned a lot throughout its BSM journey about
implementations. One major lesson, Marsh stressed is to
build an environment for development and testing that is
customer representative. “That means having customer data,
customizations and the schema which those are built on, so
that you can test and be confident that those behaviors will
flow through into production,” Marsh explains. Entering attributes for Engineering
Change Order in ENOVIA
With upgrades every year or so, Marsh says change management
is continual, and V6R2013x has been no exception. “Our
objective was to inform our stakeholders what to expect well
in advance. We established a very robust communication
plan, which included an effort to encourage testing from the
business,” Marsh says.
Bell’s implementation team communicated frequently, Marsh
stressed, through many different avenues. They hosted ‘lunch
and learn’ events, created websites and relied heavily on
repeated email communication.
Training also was thorough and conducted well in advance
of GoLive with users across the organization and among

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contractors and partners. “We reached out to all constituents –
Starrag Heckert Simulation

©2015 Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved. 3DEXPERIENCE®, the Compass icon and the 3DS logo, CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, ENOVIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, 3D VIA, 3DSWYM, BIOVIA, NETVIBES, and 3DEXCITE are commercial trademarks
from engineers and contractors to manufacturing engineering,
in DELMIA V6
quality stakeholders, suppliers and even the FAA and our
customers,” Marsh stresses. “We ensured that they knew how
to navigate to get the information they needed to support our
business.”
Marsh says the biggest lesson learned from the V6R2013x Focus on Bell Helicopter
upgrade, however, is to make a very robust plan. “Plan for
mistakes; plan for challenges; staff the plan; identify issues Products: Bell Helicopter, a wholly owned subsidiary
early and get risks mitigated,” he advises. “Ensure that you’ve of Textron Inc., is an industry-leading producer of
got engagement from all areas of the business validating that commercial and military, manned and unmanned
your business needs are still being met. And plan in such a vertical-lift aircraft and the pioneer of the
way that your implementation can be event- or gate-driven, revolutionary tiltrotor aircraft.
not date-driven. There’s always a time factor, but you want to
ensure you get the functionality required. You don’t want to Revenue: $4.3 Billion USD (2014)
break things that are working.”
Overall productivity of Bell’s teams has improved noticeably Employees: 8,500+
with V6R2013x. “With ENOVIA for our entire enterprise, the
information around the product or the aircraft is available and Headquarters: Fort Worth, Texas, USA
visible to everyone that needs the data, not only the engineers,
which is the way it was in the past,” Cloud says. “And because For more information
ENOVIA is the primary for most of the product data and sends www.bellhelicopter.com
it to CAMS and SAP as the secondary systems, we are seeing
an increase in the quality, with fewer errors created from data
conversions or human input, of what is communicated from
engineering to the shop floor.”

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