Contour Premium Aircraft Seating, Taking wing

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Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : Innovation Design and PLM
Published : October 2007

Anticipating the needs of the world’s leading airlines and their passengers is keeping Contour Premium Aircraft Seating in the industry’s top flight, as David Bishop told Bernie Sheehan

For premium airline operators, winning passengers is all about finding new ways to make their service stand out from the competition. And the quality of passengers’ in-flight comfort can make all the difference, especially on long-haul flights.

It’s a niche market in which Contour Premium Aircraft Seating consistently innovates. Contour’s unique engineering talent has produced some of the most iconic products in the industry’s history; including the first class seats for Concorde and the first ever flat ‘bed in the sky’ for BA First Class. Two new generic seats look set to be Contour’s latest breakthrough products. The Aura, featuring a unique s-shaped side arm providing passengers with 11 per cent more bed width, has been selected by six airlines for their Boeing 787 fleets – making it the bestselling premium business seat in the Boeing 787 catalogue.

“We’ve also introduced Venus – our new generic first class suite,” explained David Bishop, supply chain development manager. “It features a modular design for easy customisation – customers can pick and mix the elements they need, such as a wardrobe, drop-down screen etc.” Venus was the star attraction at the Hamburg Aircraft Interiors Show recently, where industry feedback ranged from ‘breathtaking’ to ‘there’s nothing else like it on the market’.

Aura and Venus reflect Contour’s philosophy of not just responding to, but anticipating the demands of premium aircraft travel. It’s a successful strategy, resulting in 25 per cent sales growth in the last 12 months and a bursting order book. “The growth is now evenly split between seat manufacturing and aftermarket,” explained Bishop. “We used to be reactive in the aftermarket; we would wait for customers to place orders for spare parts. Now we’re being proactive; we’re getting actively involved with the customer, and the result is a joined-up relationship where we are being asked to provide a wider package of support for our products in service.”

Contour’s approach is three-pronged. “With ‘on-wing support’ we meet and greet the aircraft after it has landed. We go through a seat maintenance checklist as it refuels. Our main meet and greet facility is based at Heathrow, with satellite facilities in the USA, Canada, India and Europe. We are currently supporting four airlines, and more are coming on board. We also offer ‘A checks’ – more in-depth maintenance and checks when the aircraft is grounded for up to 24 hours,” said Bishop. “Finally we offer ‘mid-life enhancement’. Most aircraft seats have a six to seven year life, so when the customer has had the seat for two to three years, we go to them with a recommendation of technological enhancements we have developed, which can now be applied to save weight and increase passenger enhancements, for example. By-products of being more proactive are that our spares sales have gone up, but more importantly, so has the level of satisfaction our customers are showing with both our product and service, which is leading to repeat business.”

Contour has Global Partner status with Boeing, a relationship that continues to pay handsome dividends. Four years ago, to win back its competitive advantage from Airbus, Boeing launched the Lean Enterprise Programme. Boeing’s lean objectives were cascaded down the supply chain, and chosen suppliers – including Contour – were given detailed assistance in aligning their own outputs to Boeing’s design, cost, quality and lead time parameters. The highly structured lean initiative put Contour in a strong position. “Boeing now go out to other aircraft seat manufacturers and tell them to take a leaf out of our book,” said Bishop. Next month, Boeing is running a lean academy at Contour – the first time it has given permission for a lean academy in Europe, and only the second time an academy has been held outside the US. “We have 12 Contour staff attending from right across the business, as well as 28 attendees from six countries around the world.”

Contour employs 838 permanent and 138 temporary staff at its state-of-the-art facilities at Cwmbran, South Wales and Camberley, Surrey. The company has launched its own in-house training school, with the site layout at Cwmbran changed to accommodate training rooms. As well as running in-house process training for operations and office staff, Contour also sponsors employees to do NVQ, MBA, MSc and BEng qualifications. “We work closely with local universities – just recently, for example, we had three Contour employees graduate from Newport University.”

Contour’s partnership with Cardiff University is particularly fruitful. The university is home to the National Centre for Product Design and Development Research (PDR) and the Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC), and the company makes full use of its state-of-the-art equipment for its rapid prototype and low volume production processes. “We have an arrangement where we work with them to provide engineering output of metal and plastic parts. They have the only titanium prototype machine in the country. They mock up parts for us to try out, and in return we pay only for the raw materials.”

Relationships such as these are crucial given the very short product lifecycle of an aircraft seat, as premium operators strive to differentiate their first class, business and premium seats from their competitors. Contour has implemented a ‘cradle to grave’ supply chain strategy, with preferred suppliers involved at the initial concept stage when it develops new products. Take, for example, the partnership with Acumen Design Associates (designers of the concepts for Aura and Venus). “We give them a brief with the direction of our business strategy, and they come back with a design concept, which we then feed into our design and engineering department internally,” said Bishop. “It means we can go straight from concept to a design that is ready for manufacture.”

To support this approach, Contour has beefed up its manufacturing operations. It has invested in three new CNC machines to increase its flat board composite capability, and equipping a manufacturing cell so that it can make its own electrical harnesses.

“Our first intention was to get our relationship with the airframe manufacturers back on track,” concluded Bishop. “That’s going really well and now they’re more receptive to our business enhancements. Recognition from Boeing sets the final seal on our status as world-class engineers and manufacturers.”

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