Technical Support Services

The CDI-Aerospace Technical Support Services Group is comprised of functions that are typically included in company Customer Support or Engineering departments.

These functions consist of Technical Media (consisting of engineering documentation, technical publications, graphics, illustration, and instructional media), Procurement/Supplier Quality Assurance, Supply-Chain Logistics/Management, Program/Project Management/Program Planning and Control, and Specialty Engineering functions, which include Reliability, System Safety, Maintainability, Human Factors, and Logistics Support.

In addition to these functions, CDI-Aerospace also offers content management system integration experience as a solution for complex data management and reuse.

The Technical Support Services Group is comprised of the following functions which are detailed in the representative sections:

Technical Media – Authoring / Illustration

CDI-Aerospace produces all types of technical media, and is an industry leader in providing documentation services to our clients, whether the task is simple revisions to existing data, the development of new documentation, or assumption of all technical media functions. This includes all types of Engineering Documentation, Technical Publications, Graphics, Illustrations, maintenance repair and overhaul support, and Instructional Media. The Technical Media personnel are skilled with all types of documentation software, SGML/XML documentation development, legacy documentation activity, interactive electronic technical manuals, and content management system integration and deployment. Technical media has been provided in electronic, web based, or paper output format. Representative documentation includes:

  • Test instructions/reports
  • Product specifications
  • Interface control documents
  • System descriptions
  • Certification reports/analysis
  • Engineering status reports
  • Service bulletins/temporary revisions
  • Illustrated parts catalogs
  • Overhaul and operation manuals
  • Component/Aircraft maintenance manuals
  • Overhaul repair instructions and drawings
  • Installation manuals
  • Troubleshooting manuals
  • Fault isolation manuals
  • Flight operation manuals
  • Standard Practices/Repair manuals
  • Test instructions/reports
  • Training and Safety manuals
  • Process/work instructions
  • User manuals
  • Structural repair, wiring diagram and tooling manuals

Expertise also includes the preparation of proposals, business documentation (process and work instructions), shop floor assembly guides, legacy data conversion, DTD and schema development and presentations.

CDI-Aerospace Technical Support Services provides conversion of legacy data, regardless of its native format via optical character recognition software, or using the native format software. Scanning, tracing, and optical character recognition conversion of illustrations to digitized formats such as computer graphics metafiles or scalable vector graphics are common production activity for CDI-Aerospace. Graphics and illustration services include animations, presentation material, digital imaging, scanning, isometric/orthographic projection, two-dimensional and three-dimensional models, and various types of diagrams and schematics. CDI-Aerospace currently maintains a broad spectrum of publications and illustration software, is experienced with current CAD programs, and has the capability to manipulate native format and 2D/3D models for data and illustrations. CDI also employs a group of software programmers and system architects that can develop custom-tailored software solutions, stylesheets, and integrate content management systems to support the production of technical documentation.

This diverse and experienced technical skill base translates into customer benefits such as on-time delivery, accuracy, adherence to guidance-documents, and cost savings in producing technical media. The CDI-Aerospace personnel have many years of experience and understand the technical media development process, interfacing with engineers, interpreting engineering blueprints and specifications, and industry knowledge and hands-on experience.

Procurement/Supplier Quality Assurance

CDI-Aerospace provides procurement and supplier quality assurance work for manufacturing companies. Personnel skilled in procurement methods work in unison with the manufacturer to monitor work in process, and help improve capacity planning to improve performance and delivery schedules. The Procurement/Supplier Quality Assurance work is accomplished in a manufacturing material resource planning (MRP) environment using automated tracking and entry systems such as SAP (for capacity planning, delivery performance, raw material availability, work in progress, safety stock, and corrective action planning).

The Procurement/Supplier Quality Assurance personnel are experienced in bid preparation, planning, purchasing, vendor liaison, providing liaison support between the supply chain, Engineering, and the supply base. Additional activities include material review board representation, processing purchasing requests, process procurement to stores or returning non-conforming parts to the supplier, providing liaison between Purchasing and Engineering to determine disposition (return, repair, rework, or replace) of discrepant parts, generating corrective action documentation, and monitoring production shortages for prioritization. These personnel have been responsible for components such as elastometrics , electronics, injection-molded and vacuumed formed plastics, restraint systems, fasteners, machined, cast, and forged components. This activity has been performed for and with foreign and domestic customers/suppliers. CDI-Aerospace is a Supplier Delivery Assurance Leader.

This experience extends to mitigating development and production hardware problems and schedule conflicts through supplier visits, program management meeting participation, and the use of tools such as MS Project, value stream mapping, and status reports.

Supply-Chain Logistics/Management

CDI-Aerospace provides supply-chain logistics and management of products for manufacturing companies. Personnel skilled in hardware expediting and administration methods work in unison with the manufacturer to provide product movement and tracking between process-step locations within the manufacturing facility, suppliers, and the customer.

The supply-chain logistics/management personnel are experienced with engineering, purchasing, quality/inspection principles, maintaining documentation and certification to satisfy traceability and incoming inspection requirements, and frequently serve as liaisons between these functions. They have been entrusted to assist in scheduling, flow-down of contractual agreements, product shipment, and have also helped with process development, implementation, and improvement.

The supply-chain logistics personnel are specially trained for hardware courier duties of extremely fragile product, and for special transportation issues. These professionals are also experienced with status reporting to identify component location and potential roadblocks, blue print interpretation, and quality and inspection document interpretation.

Program/Project Management/Program Planning Control

CDI-Aerospace understands Program and Project Management requirements having worked with companies around the globe. By applying the knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques, as necessary, CDI-Aerospace personnel can meet program objectives and requirements. Working closely with the customers and program/project team, our personnel can plan, initiate, execute, and control the program tasks, costs, and schedule. Communicating with the customer and team to identify requirements up front, providing performance, progress, and schedule feedback, and working side-by-side with them alleviates wait time, and the potential for incorrect activity and cost waste. The Program/Project Management professionals are skilled with typical interface and control activities, and integrated product development team (IPDT) and working group implementation and interaction.

These professionals are skilled with the development of work breakdown structures, project schedule creation, resource planning, responsibility assignment, cost estimating and budgeting, cost controls, project plan creation, and risk management techniques. This includes experience with the tools necessary to accomplish these tasks: MS Project, Primavera, C/SCS software systems, MS Excel and MS Access. Additionally, CDI-Aerospace personnel are skilled with cost/schedule variance analysis (earned value) management techniques. CDI-Aerospace also has the ability to provide program planning and control (PP&C) resources to develop and control program schedule and costs. Typical PP&C activities include preparation of work breakdown structures, master program schedules, critical path analysis, program (task) plans, work packages, budget allocations, and resource management, forecasting, and analysis.

The CDI-Aerospace Program/Project Management personnel have experience with six-sigma principles and deployment, continuous improvement techniques, and interface and support with engineering, manufacturing, and quality. This includes new product development programs, component improvement programs, and cost reduction programs.

Specialty Engineering

CDI-Aerospace has the capability to perform Specialty-Engineering functions. Specialty Engineering includes Reliability, Maintainability, Human Factors, System Safety, and Logistics Support Engineering. These functional activities can be performed for product conception to product phase out. This includes complete program task activity from program plans (specifying methods, techniques, and criteria to achieve specialty engineering objectives), qualitative and quantitative analyses of specialty engineering attributes:

  • FME(C)A
  • Predictions Analyses
  • RCM/MSG-3 Analyses
  • Hazard Analyses
  • Fault Tree Analysis
  • Explosive Ordnance Data
  • Safety Analysis
  • Task Analyses
  • Anthropometric Data
  • Error-proofing Techniques
  • Protective Gear Interface
  • Weight/Size Requirements
  • Provisioning
  • Tooling/Special Equipment Requirements
  • Maintenance/Maintainer Data
  • Trade-study Analysis
  • Support Requirements and Techniques
  • Product Life-Cycle Cost
  • Logistics Support Analyses

These functions are typically grouped together because of the interactions and overlap of each discipline to the other. Specialty-Engineering activity at CDI Aerospace has been conducted using both commercial and DoD guidance documents. Work has been performed for minor and major military, industrial, and commercial components and systems.