What do airplanes and herbal candies have in common?

Their inventors: the Swiss. Without an understanding of the Bernoulli equation, developed by the Basel brothers Johann and Daniel Bernoulli, no aircraft could take off and truly fly. Take, for example, the PC-12, the world’s best-selling single-engine turboprop aircraft. Or the PC-24, the first business jet ever capable of operating on short unpaved runways. These and other aircraft are developed, built, and marketed in Stans, in the canton of Nidwalden—by Pilatus, the Swiss industry leader.

Ready for Take-Off: The PC-24 is the first business jet capable of operating on short unpaved runways

Of course, developing a new aircraft isn’t something you just do on the side. All sorts of tests, analyses, and simulations are required before it’s ready for series production. Virtually every single component is put to the test. That’s why, for Pilatus, it’s not just engineering that matters, but also how it interacts with production. Production efficiency stands or falls on the optimal integration of all work steps—if only to ensure transparent traceability for quality assurance.

In conventional processes, individual components are designed in CAD systems with visual support, managed using PLM systems, and finally transferred to business processes (ERP) and production (MES). To achieve a short time-to-market, this takes place through iterative processes that require rapid implementation of changes to master data and transaction data for ERP and production. Clearly, efficient and secure processes demand reliability and thoroughness. 

Typical Swiss virtues such as these can be ideally supported today with software solutions. Pilatus relies on io’s unparalleled expertise in this regard—and, following extensive consultation, has chosen SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for Production Engineering and Operations, or SAP PEO for short. 

Interact and Integrate

SAP PEO has, for the first time, made it possible to work consistently with 3D models imported from an external design program. Previously, users had to make do with bills of materials and work plans without 3D visualization, which was significantly more prone to errors—and correspondingly more expensive—due to the many interfaces required with various third-party systems. SAP PEO contributes significantly to the standardization of the production and system landscape—in part because all process participants can now work from the same data source.

SAP PEO interacts seamlessly with other classic SAP modules—out of the box, without any additional integration effort. Together with the relevant bills of materials for the individual assemblies, PEO creates a “change folder” that guides the user through managed processes and shows them everything that needs to be adjusted. PEO particularly demonstrates its strength when handling design changes: Using the “Change Impact Analysis,” it identifies all objects that need to be modified. The end-to-end process is rounded out on the production floor. Through PEO, all production workers receive all necessary information directly on the shop floor, including advanced 3D models and videos. Feedback can be monitored and evaluated in real time via monitoring apps.

Unprecedented Usability

In 2022, io set up a “sandbox” for Pilatus in just six months—a test environment that got the entire end-to-end process up and running with SAP PEO. At the same time, io’s experts trained 30 key users from various departments at Pilatus. These users actively tested the processes in SAP PEO on the system using real data from the current PC-24 aircraft model—and remain enthusiastic about the unexpected ease of use. No wonder, then, that the decision to implement the system soon has already been made. The bottom line for everyone involved: a truly outstanding project!