Aerospace programs need delivery certainty — not average lead times.
ERP tracks work orders and costs. RippleFlo simulates complex routings, shared CNC bottlenecks, NDT queues, and contractual milestones — before a program office calls.
Tracks work orders. Misses queue contention.
ERP schedules operations on standard times. It doesn't model when CNC Mill contention pushes Lot 14 past a contractual milestone while Lot 9 slips through an alternate qualified route.
- Promise dates built from average routing times — not live queue depth
- Cannot simulate qualified alternate machines when primary is down
- Program milestone risk discovered at weekly review, not days earlier
- Capital requests justified by gut feel — not DES-proven bottleneck data
Simulates the program routing.
A discrete-event twin of your shop: forgings, CNC, surface treat, NDT, assembly, and CMM — with per-lot slip traced to the station that caused it.
- Models multi-operation routings with alternate qualified equipment
- Traces CNC downtime through NDT, assembly, and ship commitments
- Scores program milestones on track, at risk, or critical
- Pre-commit preview before publishing schedule changes to the floor
Aerospace manufacturing — ERP vs RippleFlo
| Dimension | ERP / MES | RippleFlo |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery promise | Average routing lead time | DES feasibility with queue contention |
| Alternate routing | Manual planner override | Qualified alternate paths in simulation |
| Shared CNC | Assumes capacity available | Models contention across programs |
| NDT / inspection queue | Fixed offset | Dynamic queue with ripple propagation |
| Program milestones | Weekly status review | Amber/red alerts days earlier |
| Machine failure | Logged post-event | MTBF/MTTR injected — measure lot slip |
| Audit trail | Reconstruct from work orders | Deterministic replay + commitment diff |
| What-if cost | Change live schedule | Re-run model — zero production risk |
Watch an aerospace lot ripple through the shop.
CNC Mill queues build. NDT slips. Assembly milestones turn amber — visible before the program review.
How RippleFlo solves what ERP cannot in aerospace.
Contractual delivery in complex routings needs simulation — not spreadsheet confidence.
Program milestone scoring
See which lots put contractual delivery dates at risk before the program office does.
CNC bottleneck exposure
Utilisation, queue depth, and starvation ratios reveal the real constraint — not ERP averages.
Qualified alternate routing
When CNC Mill 1 is down, DES finds the next qualified machine respecting certification.
NDT queue ripple
Trace how inspection backlog propagates to assembly and ship dates per lot.
Delivery commitment defense
Pegging tree from customer PO → lot → operation → root cause for review.
Audit-grade replay
Re-run any historical program scenario with identical inputs.
CNC Mill 1 down 10 hours. Four lots. Four different delivery stories.
ERP pushes everything by the same offset. RippleFlo measures slip per lot — Lot A-14 slips 3 days while A-09 slips 4 hours because it routed through CNC Mill 2 before the queue peaked.
- Per-lot slip with attribution (% CNC Mill vs downstream NDT)
- Stage-to-stage trace: if NDT slips, when does assembly start?
- Pre-commit preview — see which milestones shift before publishing