Rapid Implementation

Airflair's concurrent engineering approach is ideally suited to the creation of one-off and small batch solutions in the shortest possible timescale. We are very used to the idea that test facilities can't be defined until quite late, sometimes alarmingly late, in the programme. We also know how much pressure there is to have the test facilities available when they're needed – to not delay testing as the programme moves into its latter stages and those deadlines get ever closer. 

To complement the turnaround advantages of concurrent engineering we make extensive use of hardware and software elements drawn from our Baseline Architecture. The Baseline Architecture is by no means mandated, but it does provide a proven, versatile, set of hardware and software IP and the mature, reliable,  interfaces necessary to put these elements to use. Our test systems therefore usually use some and usually use many of these components, allowing us to concentrate ab initio design on those parts of the requirement which are truly novel. The extent of this design re-use is such that we are only rarely in a position where design takes place without some form of existing starting point. 

Accelerating the design process is all very well, but of only limited use if it takes an age to realise the design in hardware. This is why we do most of our manufacturing in house. It's entirely natural to include this manufacturing activity within the scope of the concurrent engineering – and the results are even more savings in cost and risk. For example, in a particularly tightly packed enclosure we may well prototype both the enclosure (perhaps in plastic or MDF) and the circuit boards at a very early stage in the design. This proves (we hope!) the design within a few hours of it becoming available – and it proves the manufacturing data and manufacturability at the same time, long before these aspects are at crisis level.

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