Development of a methodology for improving the aircraft systems installation process.

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.