Afuzion

Digital engineering has the potential to bring forth a new era for aerospace and defense (A&D) by making the industry more efficient, innovative, and resilient. The A&D sector still has paperbased processes, fragmented data systems, and manual operations throughout its research, design, and development operations that are becoming a dead weight while accelerating development cycles. Digital engineering largely comes to the aid in that regard by offering opportunities—from design optioneering to intelligent manufacturing—that can drastically optimize development cycles and bring about innovation with greater efficiency, quality, and speed. In light of this, the sector is increasingly implementing integrated digital software solutions to enhance collaboration throughout its research, design, and development stages and accelerate the development cycles.

However, while embracing this rapid digitalization, safety remains a priority. Especially as the complexity of aviation and avionics products are swiftly expanding and their development schedules are steadily shrinking, product safety necessitates predominant consideration. It is on this front the pioneering capabilities of Afuzion come to the aid of aviation and avionics companies.

When it comes to safety-critical services for aircraft, aviation, and avionics system development, Afuzion is a leader in the sector. AFuzion has many decades of experience in helping aviation and avionics companies stay in lockstep with advanced technologies and best practices by bringing the whole range of safety-critical services and products under one umbrella. AFuzion offers knowledge and expertise for aircraft software and hardware as well as ground and satellite systems by providing a spectrum of solutions and services, including engineering augmentation, training, gap analysis, mentoring, auditing, software outsourcing, and certification.

AFuzion works closely with different aviation agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and worldwide militaries and commercial aviation partners to transform aviation and avionics system development. AFuzion’s broad client base further underlines its efficacy, constituting about 70 percent of the world’s largest 400 aviation companies. The company has its network in more than 30 countries to support this clientele.

The One-Stop Shop for Safety-Critical Products and Services

The advanced and customized top-of-the-line specialty advising and certification services that AFuzion delivers is indeed a gamechanger for companies in today’s ever-evolving technological landscape. With the advent of innovative models like urban air mobility (UAM) and electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs), companies have to keep abreast of state-of-the-art technologies and safety-critical best practices. Many key players lean on AFuzion’s expertise to stay at the leading edge of these trends.

For companies looking to bridge their technological gaps concerning aircraft and ground systems’ software and hardware, AFuzion offers tailored and all-encompassing gap analysis services in engineering, development, architecture, safety analysis, and certifications.

With its first gap analysis service dating back to 1985, AFuzion is, without doubt, a pioneer in the domain. The team at AFuzion first identifies the flaws in the engineering processes with respect to any of the international safety certification standards, be it DO-178C, DO-254, DO-278A, DO-200B, DO-326A, or ARP4754A.

They subsequently present clients with the best practices and clear steps to solve the flaws optimally. AFuzion’s gap analysis process is thoroughly defined so that client can implement it effortlessly. However, for companies that want expert help in its implementation, AFuzion provides that as well.

The gap analysis works just like pruning a tree in early spring—by keeping the good things that can be maintained and repurposed and getting rid of the bad. This way, Afuzion helps aviation companies bridge the gaps cost-effectively with minimal rework.

Taking it beyond analyses, AFuzion offers a complete aviation development ecosystem by putting forth pre-packaged development/certification frameworks. These frameworks contain over 100 plans, checklists, and templates for all engineering lifecycle phases, including safety assessment, avionics systems design, software and hardware design, and certification. Leveraging their out-of-the-box capability, aviation and avionics companies can drastically reduce the development or certification time by 30 to 40 percent, which helps them substantially improve the time to market. By offering customized auditing and mentoring services, the AFuzion team can also optimize this whole process for clients.

Backing these robust services is AFuzion’s talented pool of senior engineers who engage with their clients’ teams on a daily basis. Every AFuzion engineer has around 25 years of industry experience. Leaning on their 1000 person-years plus experience, the AFuzion team is ever-ready to exceed client expectations on safety and reliability, systems engineering, software engineering, hardware engineering, and quality assurance.

The Pioneers in Certification and Development Training

Currently, there is a surging need for technical training in radically transforming the aviation landscape. For instance, fuel options like battery technology and hydrogen power are vigorously being explored and developed to make aviation ‘greener,’ requiring extensive engine and technology updates. Adding to such technology trends is the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimation that there will be a near doubling of passengers and cargo numbers by 2036. Against such a backdrop, the world’s estimated 75,000 aviation engineering developers need continued best-in-class certification training on system development to keep up-to-date with the changing technologies. AFuzion is a trailblazer in that regard, having been adeptly combining the latest industry and regulatory knowledge with advanced engineering practices since 1989.

“Remarkably, AFuzion has trained over 32,000 aviation engineering developers in 40 countries over the years—a figure that is more than all our industry peers combined. Today, all the major technical aviation tradeshows have standardized AFuzion’s training,” states Vance Hilderman, CEO of AFuzion. AFuzion provides the training in three formats— public, private, and remote. Its training programs cover all the international safety certification standards. Besides, AFuzion also offers safety-critical system development, certification, and compliance training. The live remote training especially offers AFuzion’s clients the flexibility to accommodate training during work hours. The attendees can participate in three- or fourhour modules daily and still do their regular work in the remaining hours, ensuring they do not get behind the work schedule.

AFuzion has a team of seven well-versed trainers on that front, who are experts in different aspects of the aviation ecosystem.

Two of the four world-renowned books on avionics design and certification are authored by members of the AFuzion team. These books and a private library of pre-recorded materials are provided to participants during the training to help them comprehend highly technical topics. With the aviation sector set to disrupt and burgeon like never before, aviation companies indeed have the most proficient training partner in AFuzion.

Leading the Way in Aviation

A recent client success story best reflects how AFuzion is trailblazing in the domain with its services. Four years ago, a private aircraft manufacturer, Pipistrel, approached AFuzion. The company wanted to make the world’s first all-electric aircraft

The Pipistrel team worked closely with the Afuzion team, utilizing AFuzion’s training and gap analysis and procuring all their certification frameworks. The company also availed AFuzion’s safety assessment, engineering review, and auditing services. Eighteen months later, Pipistrel successfully obtained the world’s first all-electric (100 percent batterypowered) certification.

Most of the leading aviation development software in the market today use AFuzion’s intellectual properties. For example, JamaConnect, one of the fastest-growing requirements management and traceability tools in the aviation sector, has fully integrated AFuzion’s aviation
templates/checklists in its product line, which is used by tens of thousands of engineering developers. AFuzion is also working with militaries of different countries, such as the U.S., UK, Israel, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Italy, to help them with development and certification standards.

What enables AFuzion to craft such success stories is its uniqueness in the space. On the one hand, AFuzion is a firm solely focused on aviation, enabling it to be more agile in the rapidly evolving aviation ecosystem than its large competitors. On the other, AFuzion makes a considerable investment of $2 million in R&D every year, unlike its small competitors. AFuzion thus brings the best of both worlds, enabling clients to bring about unique success stories of their own.

The Guiding Light for Safe Aviation

Extending its scope beyond such triumphs, AFuzion plays a more prominent role today in enhancing the future of aviation. For starters, it is working with several universities to promote eco-friendly aviation among the youth. Different educational institutions like the University of Malaga in Spain and Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. have all started leveraging AFuzion’s expertise on this front. Simultaneously, AFuzion also encourages diversity and inclusion by fostering the balanced participation of genders and minorities that are often underrepresented in the sector. Besides, the company is also constantly involved in propagating state-of-the-art information on aviation development by publishing technical whitepapers and offering training videos on YouTube. Some of these have public access, sharing the latest know-how on aviation safety. For instance, its DO-178 Introduction Whitepaper is accessed by aviation engineers worldwide over a hundred times per day.

Riding on the coattails of such competencies, AFuzion is undoubtedly at the vanguard of innovation in the aviation space. No wonder the firm has managed to attain a 100 percent client repeat rate. Leveraging AFuzion’s top-of-the-line services, aviation and avionics companies can rest assured that they will be second to none when it comes to safety-critical and aviationrelated certification and development.