Abstract:
In the aviation industry, competition to be the market leader is intense; Airbus
must differentiate from its rival Boeing by applying the most innovative
solutions. Building aircraft faster and cheaper, without affecting the quality has
continued to grow in importance. It is not enough to apply the traditional lean
manufacturing philosophy developed by Toyota; in fact, this philosophy does
not include other perspectives unrelated to production specific to aircraft build.
It has also become increasingly difficult to ignore, the problems which occur in
the production; more specifically in the installation of systems such as fuel,
bleed air and electrics. These issues, which could be from ergonomic
challenges due to the traditional build of the aircraft wings or visibility or access
restrictions due to the structural complexity, can represent a significant
proportion of the cost and time involved in wing manufacture.
The research so far has concentrated on individual manufacturing and
assembly technologies, whereas this project seeks to take a more global view
of the systems installation process.
This thesis presents a solution for the mentioned gap: a 3-step continuous
improvement methodology which provides a structured approach to identify
improvement opportunities on the existing system installation process by
capturing shop-floor operator’s perspective, but also gathers the basic
knowledge for initiating a Design-for-System-Installation approach of designing
future aircraft systems.
The developed improvement methodology, which evaluates shop-floor
operators’ “perception of work” and presents results to identify opportunities,
utilises a questionnaire which has been designed for this specific purpose. It
has been successfully implemented in three industrial case-studies measuring
and quantifying the ease of installation, and providing feedback to improve the
product, process, people and technology aspects of the system installation.
