Sikorsky Airframe Full Spectrum Customer/Supplier Collaboration

Abstract

Sikorsky airframe collaboration with suppliers and military customers has been evolving over the past 20 years to continually decrease the cycle time for design development including customer concurrent oversight and airworthiness certification (“Information Week - Communication Aids Design”, Reference 1). Future Vertical Lift (FVL) aircraft rapid development schedules including the Raider-X® Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) Competitive Prototype (CP) fly-off and subsequent production design have mandated the need for concurrency in contractor / customer awareness of design details. To address this need, Sikorsky has developed a uniquely collaborative system to share structural analysis applications, structural models and substantiating data as it emerges real-time in development from multiple sources with customer oversight to assure consistency and accuracy to satisfy requirements for rapid certification.