CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
29 April 2008
Implementation Investments
Bell Helicopter Selects Sopheon’s Vision Strategist™ to Guide Technology and Product Investments
Sopheon announced that Bell Helicopter, a leading manufacturer of commercial and military aircraft, has selected Sopheon’s Vision Strategist (VS) roadmapping software to enhance its strategic technology and product planning processes. The software is being deployed in the company’s Engineering and XworX (Advanced Research) divisions located at Bell headquarters near Forth Worth, TX. Vision Strategist will be used by engineers, systems analysts and executives responsible for advanced product planning.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Textron Inc., Bell has a global reputation for world-class innovation and a legacy of aerospace firsts. Founded in 1935, it designed and constructed its first helicopter in only six months and was the first company to obtain certification for a commercial helicopter. Today, Bell is a leading producer of commercial and military, manned and unmanned vertical lift aircraft. It serves customers in more than 120 countries, and is a pacesetter in aircraft innovation.
The segment of the aircraft industry to which Bell belongs is highly competitive. Development cycles can span decades and products are becoming increasingly complex. One of Bell’s principal challenges is finding ways to speed the right new technologies and capabilities to market. The company must be able to understand at any point in time how established and emerging technologies and supplier capabilities link to critical customer requirements. Bell must also have the capacity to efficiently prioritize projects and resources so that it can be a step ahead in meeting those requirements.
Vision Strategist will allow Bell to improve the visibility of strategic planning data and strengthen its ability to anticipate how potential decisions can impact products that can take up to 20 years to commercialize. In particular, Bell plans to use the software’s drill-down capabilities to enhance its understanding of technology readiness levels — a measure used by the company and many industry leaders to assess the progress of developing technologies as they mature and become suitable for commercial application.
By providing a single, centralized view of the organization’s roadmaps, Vision Strategist is expected to help Bell executives identify, develop and fund the technologies and capabilities that are needed to meet near- and long-term customer demands. Bell has already begun using VS roadmaps to improve insights into where and how the company is spending resources across various programs. In addition, Vision Strategist’s capacity to trace the application of technologies in Bell’s portfolio is expected to help the company identify technology reuse opportunities.
Vision Strategist’s ability to support Bell’s existing roadmapping frameworks and organizational structure was a key factor in the selection of the software. Using Bell’s planning data to create prototypes during a two-day workshop, Sopheon validated that VS could effectively automate the company’s manual roadmapping processes.
“We conducted a thorough review process and found that Sopheon’s software was the only solution that met our needs,” said Scott Harris, technology innovation manager for Bell Helicopter. “Vision Strategist enables us to objectively review investment options, pool resources across the company and speed the redeployment and development of needed technologies. It takes less time to create roadmaps and we have greater confidence in the quality of the data. Overall, we expect that with VS we will see a significant increase in our return on technology investments.”
With a single, centralized product planning system now in place, Bell employees can share roadmaps, visualize dependencies across programs and access accurate data in real-time to inform decision-making. The company expects to reduce the amount of time and money spent on administrative tasks and to eliminate duplicative efforts in developing, gathering and reporting on technology and product plans.
“Bell Helicopter’s historically strong competitive position reflects their success in creating products that match market needs,” said Bryan Seyfarth, solutions marketing director for Sopheon. “Vision Strategist gives Bell an automated strategic product planning system that will help reduce the uncertainty and risks associated with complex technology and product decisions, allowing the company to more effectively meet customer requirements and accelerate the delivery of new products to market.”
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