Oneweb Satellites Uses Predictive Digital Twins to Create Unique Production Lines for Satellite Construction
The OneWeb Satellites company is a joint venture of Airbus and OneWeb. And their goal is nothing less than to cause a revolution in the space industry through mass satellite production. These satellites associated into a functional system are going to offer high-speed internet internationally. OneWeb operates their production line on Merritt Island in Florida and is a payoneer in satellite production.
What’s the main objective? Plan a mass production of a complex product with a complex supply chain
Satellites are traditionally designed and produced manually, in small series and yearly production of only a few pieces.
For now, satellite production has never reached such a scale. Therefore, OneWeb needed to design a factory that enabled to reach the required outcome and at the same time, incorporate a complex production process and supply chain in the plan as well.
Lanner’s approach: Cooperation, flexibility and decision-making process based on data
The division of Airbus has already cooperated with Lanner in the past, that’s why they recommended a digital twin created on the platform of WITNESS Horizon to their partners.
“We were designing from start-up and needed assurance that what we were creating would deliver products on time to our customer,” said Gwendolyn Sisto, Operations & Planning Manager in OneWeb Satellites.
“Lanner gave us a demonstration, and it was immediately clear that WITNESS offered a user-friendly experience. Seemingly little things like the range of variables or the ability to make an input/output file in Excel to avoid hard coding variables in the model – amount to game changers,” Gwendolyn explained.
After the initial demonstration lesson, Lanner organized a training for the OneWeb team and familiarized them with WITNESS in more detail, by creating a preliminary model.
“OneWeb Satellites was looking for an evidence-based way to define the factory, and even in the demo version of the model, they could start understanding key aspects,” states Eric Gaury, Senior Consultant in Lanner. “From there, it was easy for OneWeb Satellites to take ownership of the model, develop it and get ongoing value.”
What was the outcome like? An exact plan and excellent overview of the production
Cooperation of Lanner and OneWeb Satellite began back in 2017 and since then, Gwendolyn with the team WITNESS for designing two factories – the first one in Toulouse and the second one in Florida.
In two years, several scenarios were tested. The model has become an absolutely key factor when planning the production flow and understanding the functionality and subsequent optimization of supply inputs into production. The company uses the MRP (Material Requirements Planning) system for executive power support and Kanban, but mainly the model offers a tool for precise planning of schedules, subcontracts and securing the right level of stock for on-time product deliveries.
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