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Airbus seeks appropriate technologies to improve production efficiency

FABRICE BRÉGIER Airbus is doing well. We have the potential to do better

Photo by Airbus

TOM WILLIAMS From a manufacturing point of view, we have to drive efficiency

Photo by Airbus

INDUSTRY FLAGSHIP An A380 of British Airways

Photo by Airbus

EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS: The first A350-900 for Vietnam Airlines, which will be the second operator of the type, takes off on its maiden flight at the beginning of this month. It will soon be delivered to the airline

Photo by Airbus

NEW TECHNOLOGIES: A tail fin painted with a complex design using ink-jet technology

Photo by Airbus

RAMPING UP An A350-900 for Brazilian operator TAM on the final assembly line in Toulouse, with another A350 being assembled in the background

Photo by Airbus

26th June 2015

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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Major global aircraft manufacturer Airbus Commercial Aircraft is maintaining a steady course. “I don’t have any big news, good or bad,” company president and CEO Fabrice Brégier told international aviation journalists in Toulouse, France, at the company’s recent Innovation Day media briefings. “We’re on track,” he reported.

“The order book is still good. The year 2013/14 was the best in our history. We’re on track with deliveries of the A350. The three aircraft we’ve delivered work well. The developments are also on track – the A330neo [new engine option], the A320neo, the [A]350-1000, which will be a fantastic machine.” Regarding the A380 Superjumbo, “[t]he market is probably more limited than we expected. But we are on track to break even this year. John [Leahy, COO: customers] is very confident that the market will order more aircraft.”

It has already been announced, he pointed out, that production of the A330 wide-body airliner will be temporarily reduced to six aircraft a month next year. This is part of the process of transitioning production to the new A330neo version. The 242 t maximum takeoff weight version of the A330 was launched in July 2012 (and the first example was delivered to US carrier Delta Air Lines at Toulouse at the end of May). Under development are the high density version of the A321 single-aisle airliner and the long-range A321LR model.

“You will say it’s pretty boring. I’m very happy to have a pretty boring Airbus!” he affirmed. “All this means that, yes, we have shifted from big programmes to incremental development.” However, this strategy allows Airbus to react faster to developments in market demand. Consequently, the company will maintain this incremental approach.

The company is also developing a network of “BizLabs”. In these, Airbus personnel will work with small companies, including start-ups, to develop and adapt technologies, to apply them to the aerospace sector. The idea is that this system will allow the development of niche technologies that would never have made it through Airbus’s normal innovation process. This idea has been trialled in Toulouse and will, in the coming months, be extended to Hamburg, in Germany, and Bangalore, in India, where Airbus already has an engineering centre, directly employing some 300 engineers.

“Airbus is doing well,” affirmed Brégier. “We have the potential to do better. Our customers are doing well . . . There are still a lot of opportunities in Asia. There are challenges but, all in all, I think Airbus is in a positive trend.”


Essential Efficiency
Meanwhile, the company continues to seek to improve its production efficiency. This was highlighted by company COO Tom Williams. “The main issue for us is commitments,” he said. The sales department has been doing very well in selling aircraft, and, consequently, the company must please both its customers and its shareholders. In the past, however, aviation was an industry that had had low production rates and manufacture was somewhat artisanal in nature, with skilled workers doing many things manually. But production rates are now much higher.

“From a manufacturing point of view, we have to drive efficiency,” he affirmed. “Today, that kind of artisanal approach – you’re really coming to the limits of that approach. We have to produce a narrow-body airliner every six-and-a-half hours.” But aerospace companies cannot simply copy other mass production industries. “We’ve got to realise that we’re in a highly customised industry,” he pointed out. The Henry Ford approach of “they can have any colour they like, as long as it is black”, is not possible for Airbus. “We’re not in the automotive business of building the same thing every time. A lot of our production is customised, even heavily customised.”

The company will have to become more lean and efficient in its manufacturing. “We want to try and optimise the buildings and assets we already have,” he stated. “We’ve got to be lean and more efficient and not just on the shop floor. We have made real progress there.” Other departments, including engineering and procurement, also need to do the same.

“We look at productivity improvements, for sure. But we also look at incremental improvements.” Automation, including use of robots, is increasing, but slowly. Airbus needs workers and robots to work alongside each other. “My practical approach [regarding automation and robotics] is: show me the business case, application by application and I’ll consider it.” Williams’ aim is to achieve a more automated and efficient production system with motivated workers. “The combination of human skills, which will always be important, with appropriate technologies.”

The intent is to develop an industrial system that is robust, intelligent (using simulation in the planing process, for example, as well as using automation), flexible, still centred on people, eco- efficient and which gets things right the first time. New technologies are being introduced. For example, three-dimensional printing is being used to produce thermoplastic parts for the A350XWB airliner. New tools have been introduced, such as “intelligent” electronic drills (which can, for example, identify the material they are drilling and can also be used to torque the bolt) in place of “dumb” pneumatic drills. Crawler robots are used to join sections of the A380 airframe. Scaled-up ink jet technology is used to apply paint to vertical tail planes (allowing airlines to select more complex designs for their tail logos without increasing costs).

This also affects the company’s suppliers. These number some 7 500 businesses all around the world, including South Africa. These range from large and sophisticated Tier 1 suppliers, which are major companies in their own right, to tiny, family-owned, basically artisanal enterprises. “You’ve got to have a supply chain management system that is robust enough to manage both these extremes,” he noted. With airliners rolling off Airbus’s lines every few hours, 95% reliability from suppliers is no longer good enough.

These companies have to have the same vision as Airbus. But that can involve them in taking risks – such as investing in expensive new machinery. To do this, they have to be certain that such investments will benefit them, not endanger them. “The danger is, our suppliers – some of them tend to second guess us,” explained Williams. “We have to be convincing. One of the ways to do that is to show them our order book, in detail. It’s all about transparency.” Airbus holds supplier conferences every year, allowing them to question the company about what it is trying to do.

The company is also seeking to improve the efficiency of its well established A320 and A330 airliner families, through the A320neo and A330neo programmes. (See Engineering News June 12, 2015, for details.)


A350 Advances

The company’s latest aircraft, the A350-900, is now in production ramp-up phase, following its entry into service last year with launch customer Qatar Airways. And the company is now preparing for the introduction of the next version of the aircraft, the A350-1000. (The A350-900 and A350-1000 are both members of the A350 XWB family.) “We know it is possible, but it is hard work,” said Airbus Commercial Aircraft executive VP: head of programmes Didier Evrard. “For sure, I’m very proud of what we’ve done last year, with the delivery of the first A350.”

Three A350-900s are now in service with Qatar, flying on the routes to Frankfurt, in Germany, and Singapore. Their daily usage is more than 11 flying hours. They have already accumulated more than 485 flight cycles (takeoffs and landings) and more than 2 100 flying hours. The aircraft are handled by Qatar on its own and the airline is reported to be happy with its high level of reliability. Operations have exceeded expectations. “We are watching closely all details of the operations,” he reported. “There are things you can’t see until you are operating, with real passengers.”

Three more airlines will receive A350s this year. They are Vietnam Airlines, which will be next, Finnair (which will get its first A350 after the northern summer) and the LATAM group, which will receive its first aircraft (in the colours of Brazilian operator TAM) by the end of this year.

“We are at about Rate 3 at the start of [operations by] the FAL [final assembly line],” explained Evrard. (Rate 3 means a production rate of three aircraft a month.) “We will progressively enable the next steps of our ramp-up. Step by step, we’re going to deliver this. We know exactly where we need to be to achieve Rate 10. In that ramp-up, we need to insert, now, the dash 1000.”

The A350-1000 is a stretched version of the A350-900, with a high degree of commonality with the initial version, especially in terms of systems. But the new model also benefits from experience with the dash 900, incorporating improvements. Thus, compared with the dash 900, the dash 1000 has extended wing trailing edges, a structure that has been reinforced in places, a higher thrust engine (the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97K) and six-wheel main undercarriage bogies (with longer main undercarriage bays). Fuselage lengthening plugs have been inserted both before and behind the wings.

Design features specific to the dash 1000 include electric landing gear door opening systems, simplified floor electrics installation, new arrangement of the bilges and composite door surrounding structures (these are metallic on the dash 900), while half of the fuselage frames are now also in composites and there is the option of a new aft galley complex. In general, there is extended use of carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) on the dash 1000, compared with the dash 900.

“At the end of last year, we’ve been through the design freeze. That was quite a challenging period,” reported Airbus senior VP: head of A350 programme developments Bruno Hernandez. The structural design is fully mature and the systems installation architecture is complete. “Now we are at the phase of subassembly start. It’s on track.”

The assembly of the first subcomponents for the A350-1000 started in April. These include the centre wing box (in fact, the centre wing boxes for the second and third dash 1000s, as well as that for the first, are now being assembled), Section 15 lateral junction panels, pylons, Section 13/14 CFRP passenger door surrounds and the wing fixed trailing edges. Tests of the Trent XWB-97K engine have also started. The first dash 1000 will start on the FAL during the first quarter of next year. Entry into service will be in the middle of 2017.


Flagship
Airbus remains upbeat about the future of its flagship A380 Superjumbo airliner. “We should have some orders for the [A]380 this year,” affirmed Leahy. “There is demand for the 380 out there. We have several [sales] campaigns [under way].”

“Passengers love it,” he highlighted. “Passengers go out of their way to fly A380s. It is inevitable that they [the airlines] will be flying more A380s.” To date, a little over 300 A380s have been sold and one takes off or lands every three minutes, worldwide. He described the aircraft as the “undisputed industry flagship”.

Today, A380s are responsible for 9.6% of aircraft movements but 15.8% of passengers at Frankfurt Airport, 5.3% of movements but 9% of passengers at Hong Kong, 6.8% of movements but 11.5% of passengers at London’s Heathrow, 10.2% of movements but 17% of passengers at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and 5.4% of movements and 11.5% of passengers at Los Angeles International. “We’re doing more with less!” he asserted.

He pointed out that, today, more than 90% of all long-haul air traffic was on routes to, from, or via just 42 cities. By 2023, this is forecast to become more than 95% of all long-haul traffic being to, from or via 71 cities. By 2033, this is likely to become 99% of long-haul traffic to, from or via 91 cities. “Those are the cities that have to be covered with A380s. There is no other way to do it.”

Air traffic is still expected to grow strongly in the coming years and decades. This is largely due to economic growth in emerging countries. In 2013, 22% of the population of the emerging countries took an aeroplane trip every year. By 2033, this proportion is expected to reach 66%. “That is the growth story of aviation,” stated Leahy. “That is also the growth story of the world economy. One of the reasons for this is the growth of the middle class [globally]. When you have a big middle class, you have people who travel for business and you have people with disposable income.”

“There’s a new move [among airlines and their customers], going to premium economy [class]. This is a growing trend with A380 operators,” he reported. “Premium economy is, or soon will be, offered by five A380 operators.” Post the global recession, demand for first and business class air travel has not returned to pre-2008 levels. Hence, the development of the concept of premium economy. In four-class configuration (first, business, premium economy and economy classes) and with 11-abreast seating in economy class (but with economy-class seats that are 18" wide, between the arm rests), an A380 can carry 544 passengers.

In April, Airbus celebrated the tenth anniversary of the A380’s first flight. The type’s largest single operator, Emirates, has been pushing for a new engine option version. Leahy observed that it was “a very big sell to our board” to undertake major changes to the A380, for one customer, even if it was Emirates. “We’re studying it.”

Emirates received its first A380 in 2008 and the company rarely operates any aircraft for more than 12 years, so in a few years it will start releasing aircraft onto the second-hand market. “Those used aircraft I see as a big opportunity,” affirmed Leahy. “Let’s say that at their half-life point [about 12 years], they’re leased at $100- million. That’s about $1-million a month. [Which is cheaper than the leasing rates for Boeing 777-300ER wide-body airliners.] I see that as a great market opportunity.” It would make the A380 a viable option for airlines that had not previously considered the type.

In the meantime, Airbus is continually seeking to improve the operational efficiency of the Superjumbo. Since the aircraft entered into service in 2007, its structural weight has been cut by 1.5 t but its the weight it can carry has been increased (a version with a maximum takeoff weight of 575 t was delivered last year to a customer which is now operating it nonstop on the route between Dubai and Los Angeles). Aerodynamic improvements have been made to the wings (notably, adding winglets). Specific fuel consumption has been reduced. Head-up displays have been added to the cockpit for the pilot and co-pilot. The autopilot, instrument landing system and traffic alert and collision avoidance system have been improved. And there have been other improvements, as well, including reducing the time needed to assemble the aircraft and the optimisation of the cabin layout to allow more seats, including 11-abreast seating in economy class, without reducing passenger comfort.

“The A380 is not a product like others – it’s a flagship for the [airline] company,” highlighted Evrard. “It’s a unique aircraft. The passenger experience is great. The airlines now fully understand the product and how to make it valuable and generate revenue . . . A lot has been done. A lot is going to be done, to reduce the weight and reduce the fuel burn.”

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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