Supply chain risk management: An exploratory research in Brazilian aerospace industry

This paper aimed to analyse supply chain risk factors in aerospace industry. It was conducted an exploratory research at an important Brazilian aerospace company. This company has a major role at the global aerospace industry. Senior managers assessed risk factors such as quality, productivity, supply chain, business strategy, organisation, environmental and natural political, indicators, product management, and information system. Analytic hierarchy process was applied to prioritise these factors. The most relevant were quality and productivity. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Collaborative Engineering Paradigm Applied to the Aerospace Industry

Airbus designs and industrializes aircrafts using Concurrent Engineering techniques since decades. The introduction of new PLM methods, procedures and tools, and the need to reduce time-to-market, led Airbus Military to pursue new working methods. Traditional Engineering works sequentially. Concurrent Engineering basically overlaps tasks between teams. Collaborative Engineering promotes teamwork to develop product, processes and resources from the conceptual phase to the start of the serial production. The CALIPSO-neo pilot project was launched to support the industrialization process of a medium size aerostructure. The aim is to implement the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU) concept and its exploitation to create shop floor documentation. In a framework of a collaborative engineering strategy, the project is part of the efforts to deploy Digital Manufacturing as a key technology for the industrialization of aircraft assembly lines. This paper presents the context, the conceptual approach and the methodology adopted.

Brazilian government support for the aerospace industry /

Item 231-B-1

Report of the Presidential Board, appointed on July 21, 1962, in the matter of certain labor disputes in the Aerospace Industry.

Mode of access: Internet.

Revisiting the lean agile paradigm:an empirical study in the aerospace industry

Much has been written about the potential impact of Lean Agile paradigm on firm's supply chain performance. However, most of the existing studies mainly pointed out Lean is for cost reduction, whereas Agility is for attaining flexibility. There are little empirical studies in literature that examined how Lean Agile paradigm impacts on supply chain performance. This paper aims to address this gap by studying the influence of Lean and Agility paradigms on a single commodity supply chain delivery performance in the aerospace industry. Data was collected from four separate 'Rigid pipes' supply chains to study how manufacturing alignment impacts on the delivery performance. Implications of the study to practitioners and academia are discussed and future research outlined.

Early stage assessment of the inspectability of welded components : A case from the aerospace industry

This paper proposes a method to indicate potential problems when planning dye penetrant and x-ray inspection of welded components. Inspection has been found to be an important part of the manufacturability evaluation made in a large CAD-based parametric environment for making multidisciplinary design simulations in early stages of design at an aircraft component manufacturer. The paper explains how the proposed method is to be included in the design platform at the company. It predicts the expected probability of detection of cracks (POD) in situations where the geometry of the parts is unfavourable for inspection so that potential problems can be discovered and solved in early stages. It is based on automatically extracting information from CAD-models and making a rule-based evaluation. It also provides a scale for how favourable the geometry is for inspection. In the paper it is also shown that the manufacturability evaluation need to take into consideration the expected stresses in the structures, highlighting the importance of multi-disciplinary simulations.

Building the 21st Century Aerospace Workforce

Begin with a call to action. Present evidence on the dimensions of an employment crisis in the Aerospace Industry. Understand the links to issues of instability and lean. Focus dialogue on high leverage, mutual gains options for all stakeholders in the industry. Identify specific next steps. Under the auspices of LAI. In other forums as appropriate.

Applying the Lessons of “Lean Now” to Transform the US Aerospace Enterprise

Lean is common sense and good business sense. As organizations grow and become more successful, they begin to lose insight into the basic truths of what made them successful. Organizations have to deal with more and more issues that may not have anything to do with directly providing products or services to their customers. Lean is a holistic management approach that brings the focus of the organization back to providing value to the customer. In August 2002, Mrs. Darleen Druyun, the Principal Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition and government co-chairperson of the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI), decided it was time for Air Force acquisitions to embrace the concepts of lean. At her request, the LAI Executive Board developed a concept and methodology to employ lean into the Air Force’s acquisition culture and processes. This was the birth of the “Lean Now” initiative. An enterprise-wide approach was used, involving Air Force System Program Offices (SPOs), aerospace industry, and several Department of Defense agencies. The aim of Lean Now was to focus on the process interfaces between these “enterprise” stakeholders to eliminate barriers that impede progress. Any best practices developed would be institutionalized throughout the Air Force and the Department of Defense (DoD). The industry members of LAI agreed to help accelerate the government-industry transformation by donating lean Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to mentor, train, and facilitate the lean events of each enterprise. Currently, the industry SMEs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working together to help the Air Force develop its own lean infrastructure of training courses and Air Force lean SMEs. The first Lean Now programs were the F/A-22, Global Hawk, and F-16. Each program focused on specific acquisition processes. The F/A-22 focused on the Test and Evaluation process; the Global Hawk focused on Evolutionary Acquisitions; and the F-16 focused on improving the Contract Closeout process. Through lean, each enterprise made many significant improvements. The F/A-22 was able to reduce its Operational Flight Plan (OFP) Preparation and Load process time of 2 to 3 months down to 7 hours. The Global Hawk developed a new production plan that increases the annual production of its Integrated Sensor Suite from 3 per year to 6 per year. The F-16 enterprise generated and is working 12 initiatives that could result in a contract closeout cycle time reduction of 3 to 7 years. Each enterprise continues to generate more lean initiatives that focus on other areas and processes within their respective enterprises.

A case study of concurrent engineering application on the development of parts for the white goods industry in Brazil

This classical way to manage product development processes for massive production seems to be changing: high pressure for cost reduction, higher quality standards, markets reaching for innovation lead to the necessity of new tools for development control. Into this, and learning from the automotive and aerospace industries factories from other segments are starting to understand and apply manufacturing and assembly oriented projects to ease the task of generate goods and from this obtain at least a part of the expected results. This paper is intended to demonstrate the applicability of the concepts of Concurrent Engineering and DFM/DFA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) in the development of products and parts for the White Goods industry in Brazil (major appliances as refrigerators, cookers and washing machines), showing one case concerning the development and releasing of a component. Finally is demonstrated in a short term how was reached a solution that could provide cost savings and reduction on the time to delivery using those techniques.

Controlled ‘Europeanisation’? The KMW–Nexter merger and the Germany’s new strategy for the arms industry. OSW COMMENTARY NUMBER 180/26.08.2015

On 29 July a deal was signed in Paris concerning a merger between Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), Germany’s largest manufacturer of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and artillery systems, and its French counterpart Nexter. The new holding formed as a result of the merger will be Europe’s largest producer of arms systems for land forces, comparable to the Airbus Group in the aerospace industry. While work on finalising the merger was underway, the German government was developing a new strategy for Germany’s arms industry, which was published on 9 June 2015. The strategy’s provisions show that German politicians, despite holding negative opinions on previous mergers between German arms companies and foreign businesses, have concluded that consolidation at the European level is nonetheless the only way to go. However, the strategy also states that the German government should exercise more influence than previously on the terms and conditions of any such consolidation. To this end, it identified key national technologies which will be supported and protected through various instruments, including also the conclusion of intergovernmental agreements on strategic defence co-operation. Such agreements may regulate questions such as the ownership structures of the new companies, the locations for developing technologies and for manufacturing products, subcontractors and exports of jointly developed arms and military equipment. In relation to the KMW–Nexter merger, such a deal between France and Germany is expected to be signed this autumn.

The impact of NC machinery upon manufacturing industry

The changing face of industry due to the adoption of `New Technology' is briefly discussed, as are the corresponding structural changes in the workforce. The adoption of NC machinery is identified as one of the major innovations affecting the structure of industry. The development of NC machinery, and of relevant programming techniques are reviewed, and the problems arising from its initial sponsorship by the aerospace industry are highlighted. The process of its subsequent diffusion into industry is reviewed. Skill levels adopted for NC use in Britain and Germany are discussed, and analysed to create a structural pattern. These classifications of skill levels are then used to examine the organisational structures adopted by companies utilising NC machines. The greater use made of higher level shop floor skills by German companies is discussed. The results of two surveys of the use made of NC by companies in the North East of England are presented. Effective company organisation for NC use is described, and lack of foresight is shown to lead to vulnerability problems where skills can become concentrated in a few key people. This led to closure of a company in one instance. It is shown that small sub-contract companies have adopted a highly skilled shop floor workforce, and that they have survived in the present hostile economic environment, whilst companies who have used NC to de-skill the shop floor contracted dramatically in the same period. The lack of awareness of the potential for reviewing the product design in relation to the flexibility of NC, so leading to reductions in work in progress levels, is highlighted. Recommendations for skill structures appropriate to various sized companies and suitable training programs are presented to ensure that the full potential of NC machinery is achieved.

Optical fibre sensors and their applications in the industrial weighing and aerospace industries

This thesis presents the design, fabrication and testing of novel grating based Optical Fibre Sensor (OFS) systems being interrogated using “off the shelf” interrogation systems, with the eventual development of marketable commercial systems at the forefront of the research. Both in the industrial weighing and aerospace industries, there has been a drive to investigate the feasibility of using optical fibre sensors being deployed where traditionally their electrical or mechanical counterparts would traditionally have been. Already, in the industrial weighing industry, commercial operators are deploying OFS-based Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) systems. Likewise, in the aerospace industry, OFS have been deployed to monitor such parameters as load history, impact detection, structural damage, overload detection, centre of gravity and the determination of blade shape. Based on the intrinsic properties of fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) and Long Period Fibre Gratings (LPFGs), a number of novel OFS-based systems have been realised. Experimental work has shown that in the case of static industrial weighing, FBGs can be integrated with current commercial products and used to detect applied loads. The work has also shown that embedding FBGs in e-glass, to form a sensing patch, can result in said patches being bonded to rail track, forming the basis of an FBG-based WIM system. The results obtained have been sufficiently encouraging to the industrial partner that this work will be progressed beyond the scope of the work presented in this thesis. Likewise, and to the best of the author’s knowledge, a novel Bragg grating based systems for aircraft fuel parameter sensing has been presented. FBG-based pressure sensors have been shown to demonstrate good sensitivity, linearity and repeatability, whilst LPFG-based systems have demonstrated a far greater sensitivity when compared to FBGs, as well the advantage of being potentially able to detect causes of fuel adulteration based on their sensitivity to refractive index (RI). In the case of the LPFG-based system, considerable work remains to be done on the mechanical strengthening to improve its survivability in a live aircraft fuel tank environment. The FBG system has already been developed to an aerospace compliant prototype and is due to be tested at the fuel testing facility based at Airbus, Filton, UK. It is envisaged by the author that in both application areas, continued research in this area will lead to the eventual development of marketable commercial products.