Quickstep, a leading independent carbon fiber composites manufacturer in Australia, serves multiple sectors. It also collaborates with the world’s leading aerospace organizations to manufacture complex composite parts and assemblies for ‘build to print’ applications.
The company has developed a range of technologies for application in the carbon fiber sector. Its latest innovation, Qure, promises huge commercial opportunity. The cutting-edge, patented process produces
composite materials to the same output standard as traditional methods without the need for a slow, energy-intensive and expensive autoclave. Qure already has been used to produce the chassis for a lightweight X-ray machine and carbon fiber fenders for a European sports car manufacturer. Now, the company is adapting the process for aerospace applications.
To date, Quickstep is focused on build-to-print with defined products and processes, but in the future, it believes its proposed AeroQure solution could transform aerospace composites production cycle times. As well as targeting applications for aircraft OEMs, Quickstep believes its technology is an ideal production solution for drones and eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft, too. As Quickstep looks to continuously expand its business scope, it has made concerted efforts to future-proof its business through ongoing innovation and continuous modernization.
“While AeroQure may be one of the enablers of efficient manufacturing in the future, we need to ensure that we produce composites competitively now, and that we don’t cease to continuously improve,” said David Doral, CTO and head of engineering at Quickstep. “A lean culture is paramount, further enhanced with technology and innovation to enable change.”
In line with this vision, the company strives for a more digitalized and paperless workplace and is turning to industry-leading technology solutions like the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to streamline its engineering and production processes and ease compliance with the strictest industry standards.
Using the Program Excellence Industry Solution Experience on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Quickstep has moved from a paper-based, manual approach to automated workflows. All
data and knowledge is stored centrally and the company follows set processes for reviews and approvals to ensure all quality and customer requirements are met.
“Our previous folder structure-based system relied on everyone having the correct permissions, and the manual maintenance associated with that was considerable,” said Kieren Dale, team lead for production engineering at Quickstep. “We needed someone to physically move the files and release master documents. You had to go through an approval process before you could even get access to a document. Now in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we’ve automated the routing approvals with role-based access to those master documents, ready to go.”
With automated workflows and a centralized data repository, Quickstep is removing paper-based processes across its business and bringing its digitalized vision to life.
“This was the first stepping stone to getting all our data in a centralized place and pivoting towards automated workflows and digital signoffs," Dale said. It’s undoubtedly been the biggest business contribution of the platform so far.”
As an existing CATIA user for design, it was important to Quickstep that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform integrated with its existing environment and tools.
“Our customers design in CATIA and all data we work with is supplied to us in CATIA,” Dale said. “We couldn’t make parts if we weren’t able to get in and easily interrogate and extract requirements from those models.”
The company is using POWER’BY to work with previous versions of CATIA and other CAD tools while maximizing the capabilities offered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. CATIA V5 data are now connected to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with advanced capabilities to reveal the design data for enterprise-wide
sharing, easy search for components or having access to related documents. .
“We still have instances where we’re using the desktop version of CATIA V5,” Dale said. “But today they are integrated directly with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and benefiting from all the collaboration aspects.”
To learn more about how Quickstep is using DELMIA for virtual testing and work instructions and ENOVIA to improve knowledge management, optimize configuration management and ensure regulatory compliance, read the full case study.
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