McDonnell Douglas has coined the term "Phantom Works" to give a popular identity to its Advanced System & Technology group (AS&T).
The slogan represents the formation of a single corporate-wide entity to identify future market needs and provide design and prototyping services for the different parts of the group.
As such, Phantom Works is not strictly a works at all, but combines operations in four MD centres: the St Louis, Missouri military fighter site; space development at Huntington Beach, California; helicopters in Mesa, Arizona; and transport aircraft at Long Beach, California.
Jerry Ennis, vice-president of prototyping centres, says the key to Phantom Works was finding ways of implementing new technologies to drive down cost.
"The difficulty with new technologies is to transition them to our next generation products."
He cites the redesign of the giant horizontal tail of the C-17 as an example of AS&T's method.
The 19m horizontal tail was reinvented in composite materials to reduce the cost by 50%, and the weight by 20%, with a corresponding massive reduction in the number of parts.
Source: Flight Daily News
