ICAS 2000 CONGRESS

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AGILE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES

Steve Timms, Tim Ogle, Mark Jackson, Chris CooperBAE Systems

Keywords: Agile, agility, lean, manufacturing, development, customer

Abstract

Agility is the next buzz-word for the aerospaceindustry. Agility literally means: Quick inmovement; nimble. If we expand on thismeaning further then it may look somethinglike; speed of reaction, responsive to change,rapid processing.

Agility goes much further than the realmsof manufacturing and extends through theproduct development processes and into theentire organisation and affects the role of thecustomer.

The key corner stone of agility is tocompletely and explicitly understand thecustomer requirement. The challenge then liesin translating these requirements into customervalue, quicker and cheaper then anyone else.

The manufacturing agility is a keyenabler, but willl be constrained by the agilityof the whole enterprise.

This paper explores these ideas anddraws upon the recent experienced gainedduring the launch of the Series Productionactivities in Eurofighter Typhoon, within BAESystems.

1 General Introduction

This paper is going to explore the steps that arerequired for a manufacturing process to becomeagile. To build on these steps then we are goingto take the concepts beyond the boundaries ofthe manufacturing process and look at theinputs to the manufacturing process and theninto the organisation as a whole.

Particular emphasis is going to be directedat the product development processes thatsupply the manufacturing operations, with thekey focus being on the need for customerfocus.

This will be concluded with the challengesthat the aerospace industry will face if it is totake the ideas of agility onwards. With an evermore expectant customer their demands aregoing to become increasingly difficult to fulfil.This demand will only be satisfied if agility isembraced by the whole organisation.

2 Agility?

2.1 Why do we need it

The word agility is one that is rapidly enteringthe realms of industry as the next ‘buzzword‘,but what does it mean. The dictionarydefinition: Quick in movement; nimble. If weexpand on this meaning further then it maylook something like:

• Speed of reaction• Responsive to change• Rapid processing

In essence the whole reason for this desireof agility is to supply exactly what thecustomer wants, when they want it and at theright cost (see fig.1). This could be verging ona market desire for custom-made products. Thisexpectation is also getting harder to achieve asthe customer is becoming more used to havinggreater choice with a rapid turnaround. Takefor example being able to get to your cash inseconds, buy food of your choice in under aminute.

This is coupled with an ever-increasingrate of change in technology, which can onlybe truly harnessed if you get the idea to themarket place as quickly as possible.

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If we don’t become more agile then theopportunities that exist can never be fullyenvisaged. The customer will look elsewherefor their desires to be met in a market where thechoice of products is large in comparison to thesales opportunities.

Agility should be the company andproduct strategy that satisfies customerrequirements, improves the profitability andshare-holder return since these are the reasonfor the businesses existence. If we don’t takethis strategy on board then it can only be amatter of time before the competition embracesit and leaves us behind.

2.2 Agile ManufacturingManufacturing has gone through a transitionover the past century from mass production ofHenry Ford to Lean, based around the ToyotaProduction System. In between these two poleshave been numerous ideas such as cellularmanufacturing and continuous improvement.The basic elements of each of these have beento improve the responsiveness andeffectiveness of the operation with the ultimategoals being to reduce lead times and inventorylevels while improving the quality.

To enable the manufacturing process to beagile then you really want it to become lean.The lean philosophy will provide the customerfocus and short processing lead-times withrapid changeovers that are required to becomeagile. The following steps are a good place tostart this journey.

• Understand exactly what the customerwants. What do they value?

• Align the production so that it is customerfocussed. Arrange the production processby value stream

• Make the product move through the processas rapidly as possible by removing allblockages. For example, reduce set-uptimes on machines so that change over canbe done in minutes as opposed to hours.

• Reduce the batch sizes down to a minimum(aim for ONE!), by doing this you will nothave mountains of inventory clogging upthe flow of a customer responsive order.

• Continuously remove anything that isn’tneeded from the value stream – Waste.

These steps will make you more agile andhave been well documented over the pastdecade and some further sources of informationcan been found in the references section. Manyfactories have even started to do many of thesethings even if they didn’t know that it wouldmake them more ‘agile’.

At BAE Systems we have taken somelarge steps towards becoming an agilemanufacturer, particularly within theEurofighter project.

The entire architecture for the assembly ofmajor units has been designed around agility.The organisation has been arranged into IPT’s(Integrated Product Teams) which gives themanufacturing a product focus (ref. section3.3). This has been coupled with a system thatexploits some of the latest digital technologiesin product assembly that allow for changes tofeed into production rapidly but also permit forimproved process control (see fig.2)

To enable the benefits of virtual agilty tobe fully realised then the physical infrastructurehas been designed to enhance the overallagility. This has involved a flexible flooring forthe assembly area that has had dramatic effectson the way we do some things. For example, all

COST

QUALITY DELIVERY

The ‘sweet’spot

Fig 1, The customer sweet spot

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of the tooling has been made to place anywhereon the flooring but this has meant that thetooling has had to be extremely rigid. Theadvantage of this is that we can reconfigure thelayout of the entire flow-line in a couple ofdays rather than weeks or even months (see fig.3).

This flexibility will allow for changes inthe customer demand to be made in a veryshort time-span but with the minimumdisruption.

Despite our best attempts, the factory willbecome strangled if it doesn’t get thesupporting inputs it needs. Any attempt tobecome agile would be futile if the entireorganisation doesn’t have the same strategy.Any manufacturing process will only be asagile as the inputs that it receives.

3 The Agile Enterprise

3.1 The ‘Time-line’

As discussed in the previous section, themanufacturing element of the business willonly be as agile as the support that it receives.The business has to look at the entire operation,the placement of customer order through to thehands of the customer. The time it takes todeliver the order to the customer is known asthe ‘time-line’ (see fig. 4).

This diagram is very simple in format butpowerful in concept. Everything that you do inthe organisation to bring the product to thecustomer is part of this time line. This time willbe made up of things that add value for thecustomer and things that do not. Anything thatdoesn’t add value is waste (1).

Time-line = value adding activity + waste (1)

The first part of becoming agile is to takeas much waste out of the time line as possible.But this can only happen once you have a clearand explicit definition of customer value. Toget this definition then every part of theorganisation needs a clear customer focus.

Despite the recognition that the entireorganisation needs to become agile then thereappears to be a continued quest to makemanufacturing, assembly and other keyrecurring process elements; slicker, leaner andfaster, focussing yet more effort and resourcefor ever diminishing returns. Whilst bycomparison, the same focus has perhaps not

CUSTOMERORDER

DELIVERY TOCUSTOMER

TIME-LINE

Fig.4 The Time-Line

Fig.2 Agility in the manufacturing systems

Fig.3 The flexible infrastructure

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been given to the non-recurring engineeringactivities. The focus has been placed on thetechnology and hardware rather than the actualprocesses and organisation through which theengineering activities work.

3.2 Customer FocusA clear customer focus is a key element tocreating agility in the business. All of theoperations within the business require a cleardefinition of what the customer values. Thisgoes further than simply looking at the endcustomer, but treating the next station ascustomer, The person who you deliver yourproduct or service to.

This is made more difficult to achievewithin the aerospace market since the customerdoes not always know what they want or whatthey can have, and for this reason then evenmore emphasis has to be applied. Therelationship with the customer has to bebecome a partnership with a high degree oftrust in each other being the critical feature.Within BAE Systems the promotion of thecompany’s’ 5 values supports this need for adeep understanding of the customer, inparticular the ‘customer’ and ‘partnering’values. The BAE Systems 5 Values:

• Customers - our top priority.We will delight all our customers, bothinternal and external, by understanding andexceeding their expectations

• People - our greatest strength.All our people will be encouraged torealise their full potential as valuedmembers of the team

• Performance - our key to winning.We will set targets to be the best,continually challenging and improving theway we do things, both as individuals andas members of our teams.

• Partnering - our future.We will strive to be the partner of choice,respected by everyone for our co-operationand openness.

• Innovation and Technology - ourcompetitive edge.We will encourage a hunger for new ideas,new technologies and new ways ofworking, to secure sustained competitiveadvantage for our company

The phrases ‘ exceeding theirexpectations’ and ‘delight our customers’emphasise the need for a real customer focus.This can only be achieved with ‘co-operation’and ‘openness’, which will follow on to amassive involvement of the customer in thedevelopment of the product. There is a warningthat has to be heeded here in managing thecustomers’ expectations. Through theirinvolvement they will gain a greaterunderstanding of what current technology canproduce in the form of performance. If they donot understand these limitations then theirexpectations could be artificially inflated to anextent that would be impossible to achieve.

Once you have this vision of what thecustomer requires, the real challenge comeswhen you have to communicate this desire tothe whole organisation. The communicationcan only take place by developing themechanics of the process that captures, withabsolute clarity, the tangible requirementsdriven out at the customer interface. Thendecompose these into explicit key productobjectives.

The customer focus cannot beunderestimated, as this will focus the technicalperfection that may otherwise be sought. Takefor example, the Lightning. Due to technicalbrilliance it was one of the fastest productionaircraft available in its time, but because of thisexcellence then some other key factors werenot given the same attention. The aircraft wasexpensive and difficult to maintain and this wasone feature that the customer founddisappointing.

3.3 Company and product strategyWhen you look at the need for customer focusthen it quickly becomes apparent that agilitycannot be something that is done in isolationwithin manufacturing. It has to be done

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throughout the organisation, from conceptthrough to delivery into the hands of thecustomer.

This would include every element of thetime-line. The true benefits of agility can onlybe fulfilled when the whole product stream isaiming for the same goal of agility. If this goalis then looked at as a company wide strategy,then the company can only be as agile as theweakest link or the least agile element of thetime-line.

Historically, the time line would havebeen arranged in a series of functionaldepartments; i.e. design, stress, tooling,production engineering, etc. This has caused aculture of ‘over the wall’ attitudes and massivedefences of these functions. This defence hasled to protection of information that has notallowed appropriately informed decisionsregarding the product to be made. As in theexample of the Lightning.

For example, if the manufacturingcapability is fully agile and can make a wholerange of products in a very short lead-time, andthe engineering definition takes years tomaterialise for any customer change. Then theagility will be rendered useless. However, if theproduct has been designed withinterchangeability and modularity in mind, thenany customer requests should be very simple toembody and make in market leading time. Butagain, this will only happen if the process theyare passing through is configured for agility.

The modular strategy will only beeffective if the definition of customer value hasbeen explicitly understood at the start of therequirement definition, and the foresight ofcustomer desires have been designed into themodularity. For example, a generic platform forradar to plug-in and play taken from an everdeveloping range of radar.

To aid with this customer focus BAESystems has taken a number of large steps thathave given the company a much greatercustomer focus. Project Axis was implementedwith the aim of assigning the right number ofskills to a particular project. This reduced theconflict for resource that occurred in a

functional organisation and allowed people tofocus in on one product (see fig.5).

The other major step has been to organisethe projects into IPT’s. This takes the form amulti-disciplined team, responsible for the totalproduct life cycle, with a single point ofleadership and a single product/ customerfocus. This has had the effect of focusing thefunctions on the customer, but also has breakendown many of the inter-function barriers.

Within the Eurofighter project, IPT’s havebeen established focussing on the key areas ofthe aircraft that we build (Front fuselage, centerfuselage, rear fuselage), figure 6 shows theparts of the aircraft of BAE Systems interest.

Fig.6 Eurofighter work-share breakdown

Fig.5 Project axis

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4 Agility in product development

4.1 The difference between recurring andnon-recurring activities

The terms recurring and non-recurring explainthe types of environment that we are looking at.The manufacturing environment has a lot ofphysical recurring activity, where as theproduct development world tends to onlyperform an activity once, thus the term non-recurring.

Historically, these two parts of the samevalue stream have been regarded as entirelyseparate entities, or functions. This has led to

each having their very own cultures andmeasures of success. They both have good andbad points, but they also have had a skewedand somewhat self-centered perception ofsuccess, without really focussing on customervalue. Also, due to their different strategies,then agility has never been allowed to prosper.They are both part of the same value stream so

should have the same goals, strategies andshare success as a whole rather thanfunctionally. Unfortunately, this has rarelyhappened.

Similarly, the behaviours also show somemassive differences. Evidence of this isapparent if you analyse the outputs of eachenvironment. The schedule adherence forcompleted orders varies dramatically, fig. 7shows a picture of this variation.

The output of a manufacturingenvironment tends to follow the pattern of anormal distribution. There is an equal amountof product completed before the required duedate as well as after. Also, the average finish

time equals the required due date. This does notmean that all orders are on time but there is abalance centered on the due date.

Comparing this to the non-recurringinformation output, there is a markeddifference. There is very little design that exitsthe process before the due date. You will findthat a large amount exit exactly on time, but the

Time

Time

Proportionof designsdelivered

Proportion ofmanufacturedparts delivered

Req. due date

LateEarly

Avg. completion time

Avg. completion time = Req due date

Fig. 7 The comparison of schedule adherence between manufacturing and non-recurring information

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majority are completed late. As a result the netaverage complete time is later than the duedate. The distribution is completely skewed tobeing late. The question has to be what causesthis massive difference?

If you reflect back a moment, andremember what agility actually means. Then itis the ability to react quickly, nimbleness. Next,think back to what makes the manufacturingprocess agile. Then it would be its ability tochange between different products, withimmediate response to a customer demand,with the absolute minimum of disturbance tothe performance of that process. Now take thisthought back to the product development worldand think how the process would need to beconfigured?

4.2 Product development with agilityFor agility in the development process tohappen then there has to be a tool-set that willsupport the goal. The set-up times need to beminimal and changes to the actual product canbe made quickly and effectively.

If you look at the tool set that has beenemployed to perform these tasks, then youcouldn’t get anything much more agile. Thelatest CAD (computer aided design) systemsallow for the rapid design of products with anin-built capability to make changes nearlyinstantly. In other words, they allow for veryrapid construction and deconstruction ofdesigns / engineering data. But there has to be aword of warning here, does the technologyachieve the objectives that it was implementedfor:

• The ability to design a better product• Reduce the products time to market

When you take into account howsuccessful these objectives have been, then weare producing a better product but the time tomarket has not always been fully realised. Thetechnology that has been employed in the

development process can does help, but canhinder.

This agility can only be exploited if thebehaviours of the people using the tools arealso trying to be agile. The picture shown infig.7 suggests that agility is not the key driver.The very agile tool set is being used to allowfor many tweaks and changes to be made to theproduct in the time allotted. This leads toprocrastination and a desire to continuallystrive for perfection in defining the product.Therefore, designers / engineers will keepiterating until it is at the deadline, and thenoften over step this because of things that they

hadn’t seen. The procrastination and desire forperfection lead into a continuous loop and thusgive us the late average completion time (seefig. 8).

This loop of perfection will be the reasonwhy very few designs are completed on time.Agility in product development comes fromour ability to make informed decisions aboutwhat to design, and what it is going to interfacewith. This can only happen if a trueunderstanding of customer value (both internaland external).The result of the procrastination is an ever-increasing amount of information that isqueuing at every step through the developmentprocess. It is these levels of information thatcan stop the flow through the process.

Agility of tools

Drive procrastination

Loop of perfection

Fig 8 The loop of perfection

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If you assess the levels of WIP (Work InProgress) and DIP (Design In Progress) in thevalue stream. Then the level of DIP can be upto 10 times greater than the level of WIP(source: Managing the Design Factory). Yet in mostbusinesses the levels of the DIP are rarelynoticed and measured. This is due to theclassical accounting methods that have beenemployed to measure the business degree ofsuccess.

WIP is measured fanatically and is evenregarded as a £’s asset on the balance sheet.DIP is not even taken into account even thoughit has a value that will often be much greaterthan its physical cousin. This value of DIPcomes from the hours of expensive expertisethat have been spent on it and the massive riskof obsolescence. This can occur if a changeripples through the product and renders thedesign incorrect. To compound the DIPproblem, then any change that occurs results inre-work that adds to the growing chaos andincreases the number of products that arewaiting to be processed.

The queues of product information stopthe flow of the system. This can be seen whenlooking at figure 9. The time that anythingspends in a queue is dependent on theutilisation of that process. Therefore, as thequeue for a process increases then theutilisation also increases and the amount oftime that DIP waits also increases. In fact, if autilisation of 65% is exceeded then you willfind rapidly diminishing returns. The end resultwill be an ever-increasing overall lead-time forthe DIP to be completed.

In summary, this will work completelyagainst the goal of agility in the inputs for themanufacturing process. Thus stifling allattempts to become agile in the business.

4.3 Freeing the blockages

As discussed so far, the desire is to produce theultimate product and the agile tool set theyhave results in the loop of perfection. Now thechallenge lies in finding the barriers that areblocking the goal of agility.

Starting with the rules for a manufacturingprocess, then you would aim for a minimum ofinventory (ideally one product at a time) that ispulled through at the demand of the customer.This is coupled with process capability that canbe changed quickly. There is also one keydifference that can easily be overlooked. Thatis that the product cannot be easily changedonce the processing has taken place. It is nearlyimpossible to add metal back onto a machineditem. This means that the decision to changethe shape of the metal has been accuratelyinformed since mistakes are usuallyirreversible. All the relevant information willhave been in-place, all focussed on producingwhat the customer wants. This has the effect ofputting tight constraints on the process, due tothis customer focus. In the unusual case thatsomething is made that nobody wanted, thenthe resultant ‘useless’ lump of metal is a veryvisual symbol that a mistake has been made.

Transferring this idea back to the realm ofproduct development, then evidence of similarmistakes is almost impossible to find. I wouldargue that this is because of the agility of thetool set employed, once the change is madethen the past guise is lost forever. It does not sitin a pile in the corner of the IPT office, givingout signals as strongly as a lump metal can.

The first step in creating agility will be tocreate this customer focus in the form ofcreating an organisation that is aligned with thecustomer in mind. Coupled with this will besetting up IPT’s that will have the singularfocus and correct mix of skills and experiencethat the product requires.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Capacity Utilisation

Rel

ativ

e ti

me

in Q

ueu

e

Fig.9 Queue length vs. Utilisation

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The second step will be to define what thecustomer really wants and desires. We shouldseek to develop the supporting process enablingus to pay more of an attentive ear as the initialrequirements of the customer are refined. Thisin turn will help us to understand theengineering implications on a practical level,and ensure we integrate these in the form ofexplicit product focused objectives at theappropriate level in the right areas. Withoutthese explicit criteria then it is difficult to linkthese to a top-level customer requirement. Thiswould help to answer some of the currentenigmas that exist within the product, e.g.’What does a 1-point trade-off on the Stealthscale equate to on the Mass scale?’

These explicit requirements will enablethe appropriate constraints to be determined;i.e. we need this box to do this job, in thisspace, for this mass and work with thissoftware. In-turn, the procrastination andnumber of iterations that are made through thedevelopment stages should be greatly reduced.The amount of re-work and change will reducesignificantly. Thus, reducing the amount ofwaste and DIP that is present and overall,shorten the time-line.

5. The effect on the Time-line

There are two key benefits of becoming agile;these are to reduce the time to market for aproduct (shorten the time-line) and, produce abetter product that the customer wants. Thethings that have been discussed within thispaper will help to produce both of thesebenefits, but through experience on theEurofighter project then it is not as easy as itfirst appears.

Within the manufacturing processes weinvested a lot of time and money intoproducing the agility that we sought. This hasbeen done throughout the entire manufacturingprocess from machines through to the actualassembly of the product. A good example ofthis is on the assembly of the front fuselageand where a flow-line technique has beenemployed. This has had the effect ofdramatically reducing the amount time it takes

to build the aircraft. If the comparison is madewith the Tornado project, then it took 41 weeksto assemble the Tornado front fuselage and theplanned time for Eurofighter is only 9 weeks.

This massive reduction in lead-time hasbeen produced through IPT’s and the use ofbetter design and simulation tools. These toolshave resulted in a reduction of parts forassembly and an improvement in the methodsof assembly due to the improvements insimulation techniques and a multi-displinedapproach to product development.

The reduction in lead-time has producedminimal levels of WIP in the system. Whencoupled with the flexible infrastructure andtooling, then this will have the effect of makingany changes to the product much quicker,easier and cheaper to implement. The net gainbeing increased agility.

The same agility and reduction in lead-time has not been found in the productdevelopment process though. The learningcurve associated with the tool set hascontributed, but the struggle to gain andcascade explicit customer requirements toenable informed and timely decisions to bemade has been a greater problem. Thesyndrome of aiming for perfection in theproduct development has kept the time taken atthis stage to be the same.

Procrastination has been prevalent, and inconjunction with the latest computer aided andsimulation tools, the result has been to producea much better product. The number of rightfirst time parts has increased massively, theresult of which has been for the first assemblyparts to fit together better than anythingpreviously experienced. This will lead to anoverall improvement in the build quality of theaircraft.

6. The challenges for our industry

In our complex industry, with complexproducts, we can anticipate that we will findcontinued difficulty in thoroughlyunderstanding the detailed requirements of ourcustomer(s). Especially with due considerationgiven to the overall project time-line, from

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formulating initial Weapon SystemRequirements to delivering and supporting aSeries Production aircraft. Ironically, it is thelack of clarity and fundamental understandingof what the customer actually needed (backfifteen or twenty years ago) that constricts usmost in the daily evolution of defining theproduct solution today. It is unrealistic toexpect to walk away from closed negotiationswith the customer, armed with absolute luciditya vision of their real needs. We need to achievethis clarity of requirements and then thechallenge lies in spreading the needs across theentire time-line in the form of explicitobjectives.

When assessing the project time line thenthe level of customer focus appears to varyconsiderably (see fig. 10). It also shows thatwhile the level of customer focus varies, thenthe degree of constraint conversely fluctuates.Therefore, where there is a high level ofcustomer focus, then freedom in which choicescan be made are more limited. Where thecustomer focus is low, then the freedom is highand it could be this freedom that leads todegree of perfection and procrastination that issought. Ideally, if agility is the strategy for theproject then the degree of customer focusshould be equal across the entire project. Bydisseminating the requirements in the form ofexplicit objectives to all parts of the projectthen the decision processes should be made

quicker and easier to fulfill. Subsequently, theamount of procrastination will reduce and thedegree of agility will increase not only inmanufacturing, but also in productdevelopment.

We have learned on our most recentprojects (Eurofighter included) some hardlessons, whilst at the same time realising somesignificant positive gain. The gain has been inthe transition from the serial ‘discipline’ basedapproach employed on yesterday’s products, toan integrated engineering and productdevelopment taking ownership for the fullproduct life cycle. It is also clear that the scopeof the new and evolving engineeringphilosophy must now be extended to embraceboth upstream and downstream elements of thetime-line if we are to develop our ability to beagile. Extending our agile engineeringapproach to understand and acknowledge thevoice of the customer explicitly and at theearliest point in the time line is where thegreatest business advantage can be gained. Thisis the next major hurdle in becoming agile inour industry.

Only when we have done this can agilityin the entire product time-line be achieved, inturn release the full potential of our agilemanufacturing processes.

Marketing Design Eng Manufacturing Customer-support

Level offreedom

Level ofcustomer

focus

Fig.10 Customer focus and constraints through the time line

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References

[1] Womack J. and Jones D. Lean thinking. 1st edition,Simon and Schuster, 1996

[2] Rhienertsen D.G. Managing the design factory, aproduct developers toolkit. free press, 1997

[3] The manufacturing challenge in aerospace. ImechEseminar publication, 1997

[4] Ohno T. The Toyota production system, beyondlarge scale production. English Translation,Productivity Press, 1988