Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T19:21:23.838Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

36th Roy Chadwick Lecture — Manufacturing Breakout 1941-1991. Development in aerospace industry manufacturing techniques

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

P. H. Summerfield
P. H. Summerfield*
Affiliation:
British Aerospace, Woodford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Fifty years ago, the A.V. Roe Team took the Lancaster four engined bomber (Fig. 1) from concept to first flight in a period of about nine months. Under the driving pressures of War and with an outstanding approach to the challenges of the project, a number of key concepts emerged, which are still considered modern and innovative today:

  1. Teamworking and leadership

  2. Design for ease of production

  3. Simultaneous engineering

  4. Materials and parts supply logistics

This approach considered the aircraft engineering process as a whole and kept the ultimate aims of the project uppermost.

The project achieved remarkable manufacturing performance targets; assembly of 49 aircraft per week at peak production, combined with a three and a half day assembly lead time.

After the War, the need to manufacture aircraft in large volumes decreased and at the same time rapid technical advancements dramatically increased aircraft complexity. The nature of the industry changed and the balanced application of design engineering and manufacturing logistics that had made Lancaster manufacture so successful, became of secondary importance. During the 1970s and 1980s improvements in manufacturing within the aerospace industry were fragmented and now, at the beginning of 1990s, when the UK aerospace industry is compared with other sophisticated, high-technology industries, most business performance indicators are firmly at the bottom of the league (Fig. 2).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 96 , Issue 952 , February 1992 , pp. 35 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1992 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Davies, S. D. Aeroplane design for production, Aircraft Eng,March 1939.Google Scholar
2. Mensforth, E. and Petter, W. E. W., Aspects of the design and production of airframes with particular reference to their co-ordination and to the reduction of the development period, Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, July 1944, pp 210–259.Google Scholar
3. AGARD (Advisory Group for Aerospace Research & Development) Conference Proceedings No 424; Flight Vehicle Development Time and Cost Reduction, 11-14 May 1987, Toulouse.Google Scholar
4. Ford, H. My Life and Work(in collaboration with Crowther, S.), Heinemann, 1923.Google Scholar
5. Shewhart, W. A., Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product, Van Nostrand Co., Princeton, NJ, 1931; reprinted 1981 by the American Society for Quality Control.Google Scholar
6. Forrester, J., Industrial dynamics, Harvard Business Review, July 1958.Google Scholar
7. Merchant, E., The manufacturing concept in production engineering research, Annals of the CIRP, 1961, 10, (2), pp 77–83.Google Scholar
8. Drucker, P. E., The emerging theory of manufacturing, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1990.Google Scholar
9. House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, Innovation in Manufacturing Industry; Volume I — Report, London, HMSO, 1991 — p 31.Google Scholar
10. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), Advanced Materials — Policies and Technological Challenges, Paris 1990, p 155.Google Scholar
11. Ref. 9 —p 36.Google Scholar
12. Department of Trade and Industry, ‘Materials In UK Industry' part of the ‘Materials Matter’ Research and Technology Initiative, distributed by Mediascene Ltd, Bargoed.Google Scholar
13. Ref. 9 — p 30.Google Scholar
14. Ref. 9 — p 8.Google Scholar