Guest Speaker Announced at Essentials for Excellence in Aerospace Manufacturing
| 9th November 2015
With airlines around the world ordering new aircraft and demanding technological innovation, the global aerospace industry is growing, especially in the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China,and suppliers must become more pioneering and flexible to keep up.
The industry faces some key challenges during the next decade and beyond. Suppliers must design and develop more complex parts and systems, with higher technology content, in shorter lead times, and at a competitive cost; as well as upgrade production capabilities to meet growing demands.
Aircraft manufacturer forecasts suggest that global demand for new aircraft in the next 20 years will reach nearly 40,000 units, an increase of over 20 per cent compared to the 1993 to 2013 period. Only around 15,000 of the new aircraft will replace existing planes; the rest will be needed for traffic growth.
Current large commercial aircraft programmes are meeting this demand, and existing programmes at Airbus and Boeing are expected to last until 2030. This ensures a strong market demand and a high throughput rate for the supply chain, evidence of this comes from the production rates for the A320 and the Boeing 737 that have exceeded 40 aircraft a month.
To address the challenges the tiered supply chain must adopt manufacturing excellence initiatives to support the ramp-up in production and to reduce direct and indirect costs via lean initiatives. These initiatives aim to smooth production flows through more automation, limiting workforce variations.
Suppliers that have implemented these kinds of initiatives have reached new levels of on-time delivery, nearing 96 to 97 per cent. Now, the challenge is for them to maintain this level while increasing volume as demand grows for original equipment and aftersales markets.
Securing the supply chain is a key priority as the aerospace industry face these new challenges. To ensure survival, suppliers need to take significant measures to manage growth and cope with accelerating production ramp-up, while integrating new technologies such as composites, electrification, and new generation engines. There is also a need to boost innovation capacities to support OEMs in their efforts to reduce fuel consumption by 50 per cent in the mid-term.
Aimed primarily at precision engineering companies involved with the production of aero structure components 'Essentials for Excellence in Aerospace Manufacturing' is a collaborative one-day conference that has been developed to address the challenges faced by manufacturers within the industry. Organised by CGTech and TTL, the conference will be held between 9.30am and 3.30pm at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Coventry, on Thursday, 26th November 2015. Register here.
Illustrating an end-to-end programming and verification process the presentations by CGTech, Siemens PLM and TTL will highlight reducing the lead-time required for installing machine turnkeys by using virtual simulation to prove the technology; component optimisation with the efficient reprogramming of parts already in production to take advantage of the latest machine performance and capability, as well as reducing time with knowledge re-use.
Reinforcing the importance of this collaboration is guest speaker, Mark Heyman, MSc MIET, Chief of Manufacturing Engineering - CAM and Shop Floor Systems, Rolls-Royce. Giving an overview of Rolls-Royce's business and the company's manufacturing global footprint specific to CAM, Mark will highlight the use of NX CAM at Rolls-Royce, the VERICUT timeline and a real business case study looking at before and after the introduction of the VERICUT to Siemens NX interface.