Engineering Design is more than creating technical products - it's the design of processes with both technological and human aspects. In this regard, the creation of a new production system is a cocktail of archetypical complex design tasks. This paper discusses the design work of the 'New Factory' programme, which aims to ensure the future competitiveness of the fuselage production at Airbus in Hamburg. The targets of this programme are significant unit cost reductions, lead-time reductions and quality improvements. This can only be achieved by a change of paradigm in the production principle: Coming from a traditional dock manufacturing, a new 'lean' manufacturing environment requires a flow production with a continuous flow of product and material. Thus, for both the single aisle aircraft family and the long range aircraft family, new structural assembly and equipment installation Flow Lines are in development and realization. These four projects contained a variety of design tasks and complex problem solving situations. Due to a very tight time schedule and limited budget, major challenges were to manage the extreme concurrent engineering and dynamic decision making in parallel to the ongoing construction process. The paper presents typical episodes of the design process of the new factory, together with an analysis of the influencing factors, leading to success and failure. The adjustment of systematic design methods towards trouble shooting situations is presented and discussed. Leading a production system development project such as the New Factory Programme for aircraft management task. Moreover, it is a permanent didactic challenge for airbus.com fuselages at Airbus is not only a the teaching and explaining of design methods and systematic design competences to the team. In milestone reviews, plateau meetings, project meetings, stakeholder reviews, steering committees and in the daily work, the activity can be compared to a simultaneous high-speed chess game: situation analysis, identification of problems and responsibilities, involving the right people, preventive conflict solving by extensive communication with stakeholders, setting up defined actions and checking the deliverables and effects of measures. Systematic design methods became a key success factor for our work, accelerating problem-solving processes and improving the solution quality. Especially under extreme time-pressure and the need for quick decision-making, design methods provided a guideline for an economic way of working. For team workshops and individual work, the support with a simple systematic design software tool was extremely helpful and provided easy access to the solution development process of team members. Additionally the re-use of documents with minor adjustments and effects of knowledge management enabled a lean development work. In this regard, the New Factory Programme did not just changed the Hamburg plant, but also provided a platform for the successful application of design methods and tools under the specific conditions of a production system development process.
Concurrent design and realization of aircraft production flow lines - process challenges and successful design methods
Simultanes Design und Realisierung von Flugzeugfertigungsstraßen - Prozessherausforderungen und erfolgreiche Design-Methoden
2007
11 Seiten, 13 Bilder, 7 Quellen
Conference paper
Storage medium
English
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