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Industry

Pharma Critical Aerospace Process Discrete Medical

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.

ERP / MES in aerospace

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

RippleFlo for aerospace

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.

Program Falcon · Lot A-14 routing· DES tick 09:18:44

CNC Mill queue Milestone at risk

Ripple trace · CNC Mill 1

10h downtime · NDT backlog

A-14 slip +3d · Ship Oct 19 → Oct 22

Milestone risk

At risk

2 lots past NDT queue · 1 critical

Program WIP

12 lots

+3 vs plan

CNC util

97%

bottleneck

NDT queue

22h

+8h ripple

Ship date

Oct 22

3d slip risk

Lot slip · CNC Mill 1 delay

A-11

+0d

A-12

+4h

A-13

+1d

A-14

+3d

A-15

+5d

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

Demo an aerospace routing

pegging.trace · LOT-A14

PO #9102 · Program Falcon-Block

└─ Lot A-14 · Ship Oct 22

└─ Op 120 · 3d slip

└─ CNC Mill 1 down 600m

└─ NDT queue +18h

└─ Reroute → CNC Mill 2 (qualified)

└─ Audit entry #44102 ✓