Digital engineering: Forging the fleet’s future
FORT WORTH, Texas – Digital engineering (DE) is transforming the fleet’s ability to stay mission-ready by tackling three persistent challenges: delivering real-time, precise configuration visibility; enabling smarter sustainment decisions; and minimizing time lost searching for data or depending on original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, for answers.
StraCon’s DE approach connects every piece of the digital puzzle – integrating data, models and tools – so information is accessible, actionable and immediate. This shift benefits everyone. Decision-makers get rapid, up-to-date insights for planning and resource allocation, while engineers, logisticians and maintainers can quickly trace parts, track changes and resolve issues with confidence.
The evolution of DE and how StraCon pioneers the field
Digital engineering is the creation and use of integrated digital models across a system’s entire life cycle. It replaces siloed data and physical documentation with a cohesive digital ecosystem.
The practice has evolved significantly over the past few decades. Originally, engineers relied on paper drawings and physical drafts. The introduction of computer-aided design, or CAD, digitized these designs, but it also created massive amounts of unorganized data. To solve this, manufacturers developed product data management, or PDM, systems. PDM helped OEMs organize revisions and manage design layers during production.
However, once a customer took delivery of an aircraft or vehicle, new challenges emerged. End users had to manage decades of maintenance, logistics and modifications. This need led to the development of product lifecycle management, or PLM. PLM extends digital organization past the factory floor, encompassing logistics, sustainment and long-term lifecycle management.
StraCon leverages PLM as the standard infrastructure for executing legal and technical responsibilities over complex modern aircraft. By integrating advanced software solutions, StraCon bridges the gap between OEM production data and government sustainment needs.
Insight over inventory: A new era of PLM
Many organizations mistakenly treat PLM as a simple content management system, like a shared cloud drive for CAD files. StraCon implements PLM as a dynamic, intelligent framework.
A standard content management system cannot interpret CAD metadata or automatically link related design records. StraCon’s PLM implementation directly interrogates metadata, establishing connections among locations, parts and maintenance blocks. It allows logisticians and engineers to navigate entire 3D drawing packages securely over the web without requiring specialized, heavy CAD software.
By building an engineering bill of materials, or E-BOM, StraCon creates a foundational structure. From this core, the system branches out to generate other unique BOMs, such as software, parts and service records. If a design change occurs, the system automatically propagates that update throughout the entire matrix of related records.
Digital twins and digital threads
Digital twins and digital threads are central to StraCon’s approach. The Navy defines a digital twin as a computerized representation that serves as a real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process.
StraCon can build a configuration and logistics digital twin for every specific aircraft in a fleet, tracked down to the individual tail number – referring to the Bureau Number, or BuNo, the unique serial number assigned to every U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft by the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. With this approach, the system can hold the precise “as-maintained” configuration of a specific aircraft, rather than a generic “as-delivered” block model or even more generic allowable configuration that other systems use.
The digital thread connects previously isolated silos of information. It links requirements, design data, supply chain variables and maintenance records. When an engineer pulls on a digital thread, they can instantly access related data across all these categories, eliminating the need to cross-reference multiple standalone databases.
Real-world impact
StraCon’s methodology provides tangible results for complex platforms like the MQ-25. By breaking data out of proprietary OEM silos, StraCon enables government teams to execute proactive maintenance and avoid costly delays.
Empowering teams with CAD visualization: Historically, viewing complex CAD required expensive software and high-end workstations. StraCon uses lightweight, hyper-accurate neutral files to push 3D models across standard web browsers. A logistician attempting to locate a specific tube assembly within an engine can open the model, explode the view and isolate the exact part in seconds. They do not need to be design engineers to navigate the asset. This visibility speeds part identification and maintenance planning.
Precision repairs and cost avoidance: Having control over detailed digital data directly impacts the bottom line. In one instance, a manufacturer listed an entire landing gear cylinder as a replaceable assembly. Using PLM data from a StraCon-built DE solution, the government spares team interrogated the CAD model and determined that the primary failure point was a simple, inexpensive Schader valve at the end of the cylinder.
Instead of shipping the entire assembly back to the manufacturer – a process costing thousands of dollars and taking weeks – maintainers established an organizational-level repair protocol for replacing the $10 valve on the flight line in under 30 minutes.
Managing software configurations: Modern aircraft are flying computers, requiring large amounts of software to operate, process and transmit data. Installing incompatible software across different subsystems can lead to catastrophic failures. StraCon’s PLM DE solutions can track software configurations just as rigorously as hardware. The system logs which aircraft received specific software updates and identifies units lacking critical patches. This prevents mismatched software configurations from grounding an aircraft or compromising a mission.
Accelerating mission readiness and securing the Foundry
The ultimate goal of digital engineering is operational readiness.
Digital thread data architecture shifts maintenance from a reactive chore to a proactive strategy. By connecting failure rates, maintenance task analyses and root-cause investigations within a single environment, program managers can identify why systems fail. They can correct the underlying process rather than simply replacing parts.
DE is no longer an optional upgrade; it is a fundamental requirement for modern military sustainment. The Foundry is where data is forged and sharpened – transforming raw information into the digital backbone that powers the Navy’s edge. The Fleet draws its strength from this foundation, ready to surge into action, while the Fight is won by those who can out-think, out-adapt and outpace any adversary.
StraCon’s implementation of PLM, digital twins and digital threads proves that owning and organizing lifecycle data drives speed, safety and cost efficiency. By digitizing the Foundry, DE ensures the fleet remains ready to execute its mission seamlessly, accurately and at the speed of relevance.