TechModal partner with HCL to deliver cost technology to leading UK aircraft manufacturer

In 2005 TechModal partnered with HCL, a leading Indian software development organisation with a turnover of $2.5billion. The partnership combined the aerospace manufacturing and cost engineering experience of TechModal with the leading software development experience of HCL to deliver an advanced proof of concept application to a leading UK aircraft manufacturer. The proof of concept delivered unprecedented visibility for estimating costs during the early stages of aircraft structural design.

Semantic technology was used in this application to provide a framework from which a common understanding of knowledge from different systems could be understood, shared and acted upon by different teams involved in wing design.

Delivery of the proof of concept was the first step towards an advanced knowledge-sharing application designed to facilitate knowledge sharing in an advanced wing design research project.  The proof of concept delivered a framework that enabled non-invasive access to key manufacturing information from a wide range of modelling and design systems. This data was integrated through a semantic model, an ontology, which defines the aircraft in geometric and structural detail. A declarative rule framework was then used to respond to emerging data, which subsequently was used to determine the cost of aircraft structures.