A Collaborative Partnership Industrializing Hypersonic Aircraft Production

Hermeus has firmly secured its place as a recognized innovator in the aerospace industry. They are developing hypersonic aircraft with speed and precision by “integrating hardware-rich, iterative development with modern computing and autonomy.”

These hypersonic aircraft Hermeus is developing will fly five times the speed of sound – turning a seven-hour trip from New York to London into a short 90-minute flight. In addition to commercial travel, Hermeus is working with the Air Force and other government organizations to develop uncrewed, high-speed aircraft for defense and national security missions.  

For Hermeus, it’s just another day at the office. For Manufacturo, it’s a remarkable story of success that gives a valued customer well-earned exposure in the spotlight on center stage. The immediate impact of the evolution from their legacy system to a modern manufacturing management software system has been a game-changer. 

Halcyon

The Challenge

The natural progression to scalable production of hypersonic aircraft that’s poised to radically accelerate air travel has been a steady climb since the company’s founding in 2018. Considerable time and resources were invested into the foundational framework for the standardized production of the world’s fastest passenger aircraft.

Hermeus was using a legacy system that had reached its full potential. They were experiencing exponential growth, while their legacy system was maxing out, unable to support the evolving needs of Hermeus’ accelerating pace. 

With our legacy system, we were relying on tribal knowledge or verbal instructions because we didn’t have anything we could rely on to track our parts. It was hard to keep track of many moving parts across a large vehicle, so it was difficult to see what went where...If something went wrong again, it was very hard to root cause your way out of that problem.

Ellen Malloy

Director of Manufacturing, Hermeus

Without reliable traceability, control, or a centralized location unifying all documentation, Hermeus could not achieve the speed it desired. Inconsistencies in documentation required rework, resulting in lost productivity. 

Why Manufacturo?

Hermeus understood that to keep pace in the ultra-competitive aerospace manufacturing industry, they needed to upgrade to a comprehensive solution that could accommodate their evolving needs and requirements.

It did not take long for Hermeus to find what they were looking for. Manufacturo provided a one-system solution to manage and synchronize complex assembly operations, facilitating a new level of scalable production.

“Manufacturo was selected for its ease of use—not only in our users working with the solution in itself, but in its ability to integrate with other current systems/products at Hermeus. It can support the full process of complex vehicle builds and maintain the highest level of traceability and control over our hardware.”

How Manufacturo’s unique value drives operational success

Manufacturo’s key differentiators include full transparency and rapid responsiveness, viewed by Hermeus as integral to achieving operational success.

Delivering a short-term viable solution for every new feature request in days or weeks (as opposed to months or even a year from larger solution providers) maintains Hermeus’ pace of production and profound competitive advantage over their peers in the industry. 

“Manufacturo has been super responsive, helping us out with new feature requests. That builds an immense amount of trust. If I come to your team with a problem that is causing my team pain, they care very deeply about our success and are trying to quickly solve that pain.”

Manufacturo's transparency and response time addressing business gaps in the system—combined with the inherent accountability that comes with it—formed the foundation of a trust-based relationship. 

Manufacturo is equipping Hermeus with the tools and technology to synchronize manufacturing process planning and procedures, simplify complexities, and boost operational efficiencies. With a renewed sense of confidence in their modern manufacturing solution, Hermeus is building hypersonic aircraft faster and smarter. 

“We can actually account for our time now. We benefit from better understanding of forecasting for future aircraft. We can also dive down into precision or pinpointed manufacturing process improvements based on good data integrity...that then increase our speed, efficiencies, and accuracy.”

Darkhorse

The catalyst for speed. A new pace of aircraft development.

Manufacturo was not fully adopted when Hermeus built their first fully integrated vehicle, the Quarterhorse Mk 0. Without the right processes in place, production was slowed by inefficiencies, gaps in documentation, and frequent rework.

Hermeus’ second vehicle, the Quarterhorse Mk 1 aircraft, was designed, built, and integrated in just seven months, with help from the full adoption of an all-in-one software solution for intricate manufacturing management. The Mk 1 is the second fully integrated vehicle built by Hermeus in the past year, following the Quarterhorse Mk 0, which completed its test campaign in November 2023. 

“Manufacturo allows us higher visibility and a better oversight of the surface area, to see what’s going on across the vehicle—and across all the different systems. One consolidated system for all documentation enables us to work with greater efficiency off our unified vehicle level work order for the Mk 1.”

Manufacturo’s immediate impact on operational performance

Here’s a snapshot of some of the features and benefits that enhanced the production cycle for Hermeus:

• Ease of use 
  The ease-of-use built into Manufacturo’s solution enabled Hermeus to go live with their new manufacturing management solution in just one week. Our consultative support team aided in the set-up of complementary systems and other tasks required to ensure a seamless transition from their legacy system to Manufacturo. 
   
• Centralized documentation and traceability 
  With all processes and procedures instantly documented and tracked, Hermeus’ only reliance today is on their single source of truth. A unified system of record and traceability empowered team members across the organization to step into another role, when needed, quickly understand procedures, and execute tasks seamlessly. This helps Hermeus rapidly iterate and move quickly, losing less time and productivity in change management. 

“Having a centralized location of all documentation and a system of record, plus traceability and control, allows us to move a lot more quickly now. The increased speed is the result of not having to do as much rework or fixing of nonconformances.”

• Data-driven decision making 
  Manufacturo provided Hermeus with improved data integrity and unified historical documentation, enabling them to execute deeper analysis of performance metrics, gleaning new insights. This actionable intelligence is being leveraged to inform smarter decisions that drive better outcomes.

“With Manufacturo, we can now query across the entire vehicle-to find the answers to critical questions, like what area should we focus our efforts on? We can also compare productions cycles between vehicles, to determine improvements.”

Quarterhorse Mk 1

Powering an ambitious vision of the future of passenger travel

As the relationship between Manufacturo and Hermeus matures and yields new innovations in aerospace manufacturing, we take another step towards achieving a shared vision for the future of air travel and meeting the mission--to operationalize hypersonic aircraft.

We are thrilled to partner with Hermeus as they continue to leverage Manufacturo to develop hypersonic aircraft at unparalleled speed and precision. The synergy between our organizations and our mutual deep level of trust and transparency makes this relationship unique.

It’s a joy to engage their brilliant team of innovators. We value their direct input, identifying new features that add value to our solution to improve it for our community of users. We are excited to progress in this journey with Hermeus, helping them fulfill their ambitious vision for the future of passenger travel at hypersonic speed.

James Montgomery

Chief Product Officer, Manufacturo

Manufacturo and Hermeus’ collaborative partnership is setting a new standard for the pace of hypersonic aircraft production—propelled by operational efficiencies, simplified complexities, and scalability provided by Manufacturo’s one-system solution. A new era of air travel at Mach 5 is finally within reach.