Julian Moxon/TOULOUSE
Thirty years ago, the European aircraft industry consisted of disparate national companies that were only just beginning to get used to the idea of European co-operation.
Now these entities, many unrecognisable from their forebears, are poised to become integrated in the new Airbus company to create a single European civil aircraft manufacturer. The new company's first production task will also be its biggest by far - to produce the A380.
What has become today's Airbus manufacturing system has its roots in the first two major European co-operative programmes: the Anglo-French Concorde and the Franco-German Transall military transport. In the early days, the reasons for what were then state-owned companies forming common programmes were usually based more on political factors and less on synergies that might help reduce costs. Major inefficiencies were therefore inevitable: Concorde, for example, was assembled on two production lines at Toulouse and Filton, while the Transall was built on no fewer than three final assembly lines - two in Germany (Bremen and Hamburg) and one in France. The situation was further complicated by the tendency of partners to retain their established suppliers, leading to the kind of duplication of effort and resources that is becoming extinct in today's Airbus system.
The task of distributing airframe workshares among the nations that were to become the Airbus partners was made even more difficult by each having its own aircraft designing and manufacturing capability. Existing airliner programmes were central to the future of these companies and the arrival of Airbus was often seen as just another drain on resources - and one with a very uncertain future. Barbara Kracht, Airbus' senior director for press and information services, remembers the expression used by her father Felix, one of the Airbus founding fathers. "He used to complain that Airbus was the unloved bastard," she says.
From this seemingly impossible situation, the Airbus partners thrashed out a system of workshares that proved so resilient that it has lasted to this day and has even been applied to the A380. Its central tenet is straightforward and is based on the idea of creating "centres of excellence" in each country, whereby the national manufacturer specialises in specific pieces of the airframe and supplies them as complete assemblies, equipped with electrical, hydraulic and cabin fittings, for delivery to the final assembly lines at Toulouse and Hamburg. In this way, Airbus' UK division became the specialist in wing manufacture, the German division in fuselage sections, vertical stabiliser and interior equipping, Airbus France in the cockpit and centre fuselage and Airbus España in the horizontal tailplane.
As a result, final assembly represents only 4% of the total Airbus workshare is manhour terms, and while this clearly reflects the desire of each partner to keep as much work as possible in its own factories, it has also proved a highly effective way of retaining the skill base in those countries and providing motivation that might otherwise have been absent. "They see a finished product emerging from their respective sites which is a recognisable and vital part of the completed aircraft," says Airbus chief operating officer Gustav Humbert. "It was the most efficient way of using existing manpower and made the optimum use of resources."
Rationalisation efforts
Some rationalisation has been inevitable among the partners in the quest for efficiencies. Hamburg now has full responsibility for front and rear fuselage barrels whereas before, the Bremen site produced the front section and Hamburg the rear. Adjustments have also been made to the organisation of the French sites at St Nazaire, Meaulté, Nantes and Toulouse.
Complexities have resulted from the occasional need to adjust workshare with each programme, either for efficiency reasons or because of the need to balance partner shares to reflect their stake in the Airbus consortium. British Aerospace (now BAE Systems), for example, was compensated with extra work on the A320 wing when it became a full 20% partner in Airbus because the value of its work on the wing amounted to only 17% of the total. Also, the relative proportions of fuselage workshare between France and Germany have varied significantly from the first A300 through to the A330/A340 and A380.
The decision 10 years ago to set up a new assembly line in Hamburg to produce the A321 followed a fierce dispute between the French and German partners about single aisle production. It would later pave the way for Hamburg to build the A319. The dispute raised its head again two years ago over the location of A318 assembly, with the Germans ultimately taking the prize. As part of the re-organisation, final assembly and interior furnishing were brought together at the same sites to improve efficiency.
An exchange of packages was therefore agreed, which saw final assembly of the new A330/A340 remain in Toulouse along with responsibility for interior design and furnishing, and Hamburg taking on final assembly of the A321/A319/A318. Toulouse retained the A320, and while shifting this line to Hamburg was seriously considered as part of the A380workshare agreement, it is off the agenda now as the planned increase in single-aisle production rates to an unprecedented 30 a month means both sites will be working at full capacity.
A380 final assembly will be at Toulouse in the vast new Fr3 billion ($406 million) Aeroconstellation complex, for which the initial call for tenders has just gone out. Interior fitting will be carried out in Hamburg and, while this goes against the "keep it together" philosophy, Airbus says it is the right solution given the "unprecedented emphasis" on the A380 interior, which should therefore be installed at the Hamburg centre of excellence. It is also clear, however, that this decision resulted from the extremely tough negotiations on workshares and final assembly site.
Beluga Transport
Unique to the Airbus production system is the means by which aircraft pieces manufactured by the partners are transported from the sites of original manufacture to Toulouse. The converted propeller-powered Boeing 377 Stratocruiser "Super Guppies" have now been replaced by the far larger Beluga, based on an A300-600 airframe with the top of its fuselage replaced with a huge section which is claimed to provide the biggest cargo hold available in the world. As well as having enough space to accommodate the wings of the new A330/A340 and larger fuselage sections, the Beluga obviously flies faster, increasing the efficiency of the system and reducing costs.
A further evolution for the A380 is on the cards, which will see the entire aircraft transported to Toulouse by ship, barge and truck. "We began studying the options in 1996 when we made the first sketches of the A380 to ensure it was actually buildable," says Jesus Morales, vice-president of manufacturing for Airbus' large aircraft division. It was soon decided that the centres of competence would stay, although he insists that the theme throughout was to allow total flexibility in the decision-making process. "We were dealing with something quite different from our previous aircraft in terms of size. But we knew the centres of competence had worked well in the past and that it would be extremely difficult to change it."
The main decision then was in what form the sections should be built at those centres for shipment to Toulouse. "We looked at all of the possible scenarios, including building the fuselage sections in either half or whole barrels," says Morales. "All our analyses indicated that it was easier to build them in whole sections, as we do with our existing aircraft." One of the main drivers, he says, was the difficulties posed by mating half sections built as an integrated whole with the floor sections, "which made an extremely rigid structure that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to align".
The decision meant that Airbus was faced with transporting to Toulouse huge, complete fuselage sections weighing up to 44t, along with complete wing shipsets weighing 33t. The studies were so wide-ranging that Airbus looked at transporting the wings atop a converted A340 - an idea that was quickly rejected as impractical.
A380 sections will be delivered to the final assembly line fully equipped and mounted on special jigs, to which they will remain attached throughout the journey. The process will begin at Airbus' Hamburg site with the loading of forward and rear fuselage sections onto a purpose-built Airbus roll-on/roll-off vessel. "We think we'll need two ships and they will be leased," says Morales. The ship will berth at Mostyn in the UK to pick up a shipset of wings built at the Broughton plant, and then sail on to St Nazaire, where the forward fuselage will be unloaded for mating with the French-built cockpit section. It will be replaced with an already mated cockpit/forward fuselage section and joined by the centre section, also built at St Nazaire.
Final touches
The ship, now carrying the entire A380 fuselage in three sections, will continue on to Bordeaux, where the horizontal tailplane and belly fairing will have arrived from Airbus Spain. The entire aircraft shipset will then be loaded onto either two or three roll-on/roll-off barges for transport to the highest navigable point upstream on the Garonne river, about 80km inland, for transfer to specially built road vehicles.
The remaining 200km will be travelled by night, on secondary roads, the sections being delivered to the new A380 Aeroconstellation complex at Toulouse. The entire process will be repeated weekly to meet Airbus' planned four-per-month production rate for the A380.
Under current planning, the A380 will have its maiden flight in summer 2004, with the first section arriving in late 2003. "We're ordering long-lead tooling already," says Morales.
Source: Flight International
