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Fast, streamlined, compliant development of next-generation flight management systems
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
CMC Electronics, a company known for its flight management systems (FMS) in the aviation industry, was facing a challenge in developing its next-generation FMS. The company had a range of FMS products, each designed to meet the specific needs of different sectors of the aviation market. However, this approach was time-consuming and required more effort to develop and maintain separate software for each target market. For its next generation of FMS products, the company decided to build a core system that would be used by all of its FMS products, and supplement it with customizable, reusable components that could meet the specific requirements of different markets. To support this new development process, CMC needed a new set of tools that would provide a collaborative environment for software and systems design, development, and testing.
About The Customer
CMC Electronics is a company owned by Esterline Corporation, a specialized manufacturing company that principally serves the aerospace and defense markets. CMC Electronics designs and produces leading technology electronics products for the aviation and global positioning markets. The company is well known in the aviation industry for its flight management systems (FMS) – the sophisticated navigation systems that help modern aircraft manage flight plans without the need for a human navigator or flight engineer. Over the years, CMC has developed a comprehensive range of FMS products, designed to meet the specific needs of different sectors of the aviation market.
The Solution
After reviewing options from various vendors and the open source community, CMC chose IBM® Rational® Rhapsody®. Working with IBM, the CMC team tailored the IBM Rational Rhapsody solution to its requirements. IBM helped to identify best practices for model-based, object-oriented development in compliance with DO-178C and other aviation standards such as ARP4754A. IBM Rational Rhapsody was used during the system design phase for system requirements analysis, system design, and high-level design requirements development. During software design, IBM Rational Rhapsody was also used for software design and automatic code generation using the simplified C++ execution framework, which is ideally suited for safety-critical development. To ensure that the software design was properly verified, CMC used IBM Rational Rhapsody Test Conductor with the Unified Modeling Language (UML) Testing Profile to automate aspects of the unit testing process.
Operational Impact
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