November 9, 2009 -- Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), a manufacturer of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, announced that it leveraged Mentor Graphics' simulation software to significantly reduce the time needed to design the electrical wiring system of its newest platform. The Korean Helicopter program is scheduled to first fly in early 2010; for the project, KAI chose tools within Mentor’s CHS product family, with the objective of improving the process efficiency for this complex task.
KAI used Mentor’s CHS Capital Logic software, supplemented by the CHS electrical simulation and 3D MCAD integration applications, to create several hundred detailed wiring schematics representing the new helicopter’s electrical system. Because the CHS product employs a highly data-centric paradigm, many design tasks - such as the management of objects shared across multiple schematics - can be significantly automated, reducing both design and validation time, according to Mentor.
KAI says the development of the helicopter reached a milestone with the release of a complete set of electrical wiring designs, so valid comparisons can be made with previous methodologies. Specifically, KAI claims to have achieved a 20% reduction in wiring system design time compared with their previous norms.
A KAI representative said, “CHS gives us a substantial productivity boost. Not only are the tools easy to use, they also provide superior automation and ensure a high level of data correctness, thus cutting the time needed to develop the very complicated interconnect wiring found on a modern helicopter. And we can extend our use of the tools to achieve yet more efficiency improvements, for example by exploiting CHS’s web-based data reporting capability.”
“KAI is a textbook example of an organization leveraging CHS’s technical power to achieve real business benefits," concludes Martin O’Brien, general manager of Mentor’s Integrated Electrical Systems division. "Wiring design often occurs late in a platform’s development cycle, so time savings have a genuine impact. As regulatory requirements relating to aerospace wiring become increasingly onerous, we expect more and more attention to be paid to this area.”
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