It’s not unusual for an aerospace manufacturer to find several products doing the same job across its programs: three fuel-tank sealants, say, or a handful of structural adhesives. Often they’re qualified to the same spec, but each one is a separate product from a different supplier, with its own approvals and supplier relationship to keep up. I raised this at CIMdata PLM Road Map EMEA in Gothenburg this week, and I want to look at it more closely here. It’s one of the clearest returns on getting material data out of documents.
How duplicate materials build up
Nobody sets out to approve four sealants for one job. A program picks a product that meets the governing spec at the time, from a supplier it trusts, and calls it out in its drawings and process specs. Programs run for years, often decades, with their own engineering teams and approval history.When the next program needs a fuel-tank sealant or a structural adhesive, the team often can’t see what’s already approved elsewhere, or under what conditions. The qualification data for the existing product sits in a PDF on another program’s share. So they approve something similar, and the company now carries two. Repeat that across a portfolio and you get a parts list that looks tidy and a materials list that doesn’t.Not every duplicate is waste. Some programs keep a second qualified source on purpose, for supply security. The problem is the duplication nobody chose and nobody can see.
What does carrying duplicate materials cost?
Every approved product is an ongoing commitment. It needs a supplier to audit and current test data. It also needs substance declarations that get re-reviewed whenever the regulations move. For aerospace sealants that means chromate-based corrosion inhibitors under REACH authorization, new additions to the REACH Candidate List, and the EU’s universal PFAS restriction, which is still working its way through ECHA. When a supplier changes a formulation or discontinues a grade, each product has to be assessed on its own, whatever its near-twin on the next program is doing.Take four sealants, A to D, doing the same job across six programs. Sealant A is approved on three programs, and B, C and D cover one program each. Moving those three programs onto A is a design change on each one, not just a lab exercise. The change has to be classified and substantiated under the program’s certification basis, and the OEM or customer has to approve it. Drawings and process specs get updated, affected parts may need a partial first-article inspection, and maintenance and repair documents have to follow. If A is already qualified to the spec those programs call out, most of that is substantiation and paperwork. If it isn’t, it’s a qualification campaign.That’s real work, and it’s why the case has to be made on lifetime cost. In return, the company keeps one product, one supplier relationship and one set of declarations current instead of four, for as long as those programs run. And the difference is biggest on the day a supplier change notice or a regulatory update arrives. With four products, that’s four substance reviews and four suppliers to chase. With one, it’s a single review that covers every part using it.
Why the overlap is hard to see
Rationalization needs a view most companies don’t have. You need every material linked to every part and program that uses it, with its properties, qualifications and approvals side by side.In most discrete manufacturers, the digital thread stops at the part number. CAD, BOM and change management are connected, but the material underneath is a declaration PDF, a supplier data sheet or a qualification report. Comparing four sealants means opening four sets of documents and lining them up by hand, often with properties measured to different test methods. That’s why rationalization tends to happen once, as a project, and then quietly erodes.Once every material knows where it’s used, finding the overlap is a query. You can see which products do the same job, which programs they’re approved on, and which candidate to consolidate onto. You can make the case program by program, before anyone opens a change request.
Choosing which material to keep
The product already approved on the most programs is usually the right starting point, since it carries the least change work. It still has to win on the rest:
- Performance coverage: It has to cover every application it’s taking over, including the harshest one. For sealants that means fuel and fluid resistance, service temperature range, application life and cure time, and peel adhesion to the substrates and primers in use. For adhesives, add lap shear and hot/wet strength. Products in different chemistry families aren’t automatically interchangeable even when they meet similar requirements.
- Substance exposure: If one candidate contains a chromate, a Candidate List substance or a PFAS in scope of the restriction, consolidating onto it concentrates that risk.
- Supplier position: A single product from a single supplier now touches more parts, so a second qualified source matters more after consolidation than before.
That last point is the trade-off. Consolidation shrinks the number of things to maintain, but it raises the stakes of each one. When the sealant on three programs becomes the sealant on six, a formulation change from its supplier reaches twice as many parts. Rationalization only pays off if you can also see that exposure the same day the change arrives.
One material record, a view for every team
This is the problem Uncountable’s PLM is built around. Each material is a record behind the part, holding:
- its spec, with grade, vendor, revision and limits
- properties measured lot by lot
- where it’s approved and where it isn’t
- its substances, with CAS numbers and weight percentages that roll up to the part
Every material links to the parts, programs and plants that use it, so finding overlapping materials starts from data instead of a document hunt. Bodie, our AI assistant, can suggest candidates that already meet the spec and are already approved. An engineer makes the call, and the reasoning stays on the same record.Everyone works from that same record and sees the part that matters to them:
- Leadership sees revenue at risk by program.
- Advanced quality sees which parts need requalification and which AS9145 PPAP elements or AS9102 first-article inspections have to be redone.
- Manufacturing sees which plants and lots are affected.
- Sales, with your ERP connected, sees which customers and orders it touches.
It’s the same data, with different views for each team.If you want to test where you stand, pick one job, such as a fuel-tank sealant. List every approved product that does it, the spec it’s qualified to, and every part and program that uses it. If building that list takes more than an afternoon, the material strand of your digital thread is missing.
.png)
.png)
.png)
