Airbus Partners On Integration Path

Airbus Industries four partners have developed a common design and production management system aimed at radically speeding up design and reducing production cost of new aircraft.

In an interview with Reuters, Aerospatiales managing director Airbus Operations, Gerald Blanc, said this was an important step on the road to the total integration of the four member firms - Frances Aerospatiale, Deutsche Aerospace, British Aerospace and Spains Casa - which will lead to greater efficiency and shorter lead-times.

With the total support of our German, British and Spanish partners, he said, we are introducing a system in Europe which will allow us to design aircraft collectively using a single data bank, information highway and information distribution network.

 

This means well design the aircraft as if we were one company at one site, said Blanc.

As part of this process, the group would employ the same procedures, methodology and tools throughout Europe. Over the next year, uniform management systems like information technology, procurement and product support would also be introduced.

We want to have one system in Europe instead of four and we are close to achieving this goal. We have done it already in engineering and we now want to do the same thing for production management.

The companys ultimate goal is a 30 percent reduction in total production cost, said Blanc.

As part of the efficiency drive, said Blanc, all Aerospatiale suppliers have been told they must achieve under two percent quality rejection, a 30 percent reduction in lead time, zero in-service problems, 20 percent reduction in direct maintenance costs and 100 percent on-time delivery.