Airbus v. Boeing – what went wrong (and right)
Adjust font size:
Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 23 Oct 2006 14:17
A tough quarter for Airbus, which has announced two-year delays on its A380 aircraft and the cause appears to be out-of-sync design practices.
Airbus announced the delays after finding that its designs do not match in final assembly, particularly in the case of wiring.
A tough quarter for Airbus, which has announced two-year delays on its A380 aircraft and the cause appears to be out-of-sync design practices.
Airbus announced the delays after finding that its designs do not match in final assembly, particularly in the case of wiring. To its credit, Airbus blames itself versus suppliers or vendors like Dassault, stating they were tardy in implementing Dassault’s 3D digital mock-up applications. As AMR Research Vice President Mike Burkett described to us, “Airbus has said themselves, they had four different European sites, particularly the one between Germany and France, with different versions of the design applications, and they’ve run into challenges of sharing data between sites. The challenge Airbus had was keeping track of deployment, as much as the technology itself.”
Boeing uses the same Dassault applications, but deploys them more uniformly. And they do so across their supply chain. Says Burkett, “I believe, and it’s an estimate, that 80 percent of the [Dreamliner] is being manufactured externally, which is a first for Boeing. They’re doing most of the design, but they have partners doing a lot of the design as well, and at least key partners in that process need to be leveraging similar applications.
“So a takeaway is that as companies start to move design into outsourced partners, they need to move to more modular design to make sure the parts interchange.”
“The interoperability challenge in CAD systems has existed for years,” says Burkett, and described how in Aerospace, infrastructures can be hastily built to support a new program. “So if you’re tying the future success of your company to new product introduction, you’d better be paying attention to the underlying infrastructure to support that strategic decision.”
Comments on this story
click here to add a comment
You must be registered & logged in to add comments
already have an account and just want to login?
Related Content
Guest Editorial: Checklist - Seven Recommendations for Improved Profits
by Abbott A. Imberman, PhD, Professor of...
more…
FKI LOGISTEX OPENS NORTH AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION CENTER (TEC)
(St. Louis, Missouri, USA: July 10, 2007) FKI...
more…
Guess selects the tradecard platformand SourceView suite to optimize global trade
NEW YORK, July 10, 2007 – TradeCard Inc., the...
more…
Kimberly-Clark Professional Crosses Final Touchless Frontier With Introduction of First Electronic Bath Tissue Dispenser
ROSWELL, Ga. (July 9, 2007) – Kimberly-Clark...
more…
Boeing Celebrates the Premiere of the 787 Dreamliner
EVERETT, Wash., July 08, 2007 -- Today, Boeing...
more…
no comments yet...