You can automate engineering, but what about engineering knowledge?

Engineering companies of all persuasions are facing a myriad of business problems, many of which are connected to meeting financial metrics, including improving Return on Investment (ROI), Return on Asset (ROA), and Net Present Value (NPV). To meet these metrics, that most precious of commodities, knowledge, must be efficiently captured and recycled. Let's just get one thing straight, information does not equal knowledge, information can be stored and retrieved by anyone with relevant access. Knowledge, gained from experience, is learned and passed on.

In the increasingly complex world of aircraft manufacturing, where cycle times are increasing for the complete redundancy and replacement of military and civil aircraft, how does an industry, let alone a company, retain the knowledge necessary to efficiently address automated engineering processes? Specifically, as the pre-production phases are being squeezed, and the post-production phases are being elongated, an increasing gap is created between the start of new projects. The engineering knowledge required to start new projects is falling into this widening gap.

The productive, in-service life of an aircraft is increasing. For instance, the F-111 first went into service in October 1967 and was officially 'retired' by the US Air Force in 1996. However, the F-111 was introduced to the Royal Australian Air Force in June, 1973, and is still in service today. With the benefit of a technology refresh, many consider it to be better today than when it was introduced. The ubiquitous Boeing 747 gained its first order from Pan Am in April 1966 for the 747-100/SR/B and entered service in January 1970. Although that first aircraft went into semi-retirement at Seattle's Museum of Flight in March 1990, the aircraft in its latest guise, the 747-400, is still a flagship of Boeing's fleet. The 747-400 has some six million parts which are manufactured in 33 different countries.

Let me repose the question; 'how does a company capture and retain the knowledge to support the lifecycle of such projects as the F-111 and the 747?'

In the mid twentieth century, an aeronautical engineer could expect to work on maybe fifteen or so different projects during a career in the aircraft industry. At the start of the twenty first century, due to the increasing aircraft in-service lifespan, an engineer of the same discipline can expect to work on just one new project with numerous refresh cycles.

A defense project to introduce a military aircraft can illustrate the knowledge recycling 'dilemma'.

a) The defense industry would like to condense the engineer's creative sequence. The design, engineering, and prototype production process, prior to the trialling, production and commissioning can take up to twenty years.

b) At the same time, the defense industry would like to elongate the active in-service life of a military aircraft. This can easily be anything from twenty years in the USA to forty years in the UK, or more depending on the geography. The lifecycle can be extended with many revisions or mid life updates which typically integrate new technology into old designs to breathe life into aging products.

If the pre commissioning development cycle is effectively reduced by 50%, then this still spans about ten years. Using the length of service figures for a military aircraft, this leaves about a thirty to forty year gap during which the re-use of R&D, design and engineering knowledge can atrophy.
Existing engineering strategies such as concurrent engineering, product lifecycle management (PLM), product data management (PDM), and their associated sets of standards such as CALS, PDES Inc., STEP, et al, are all geared to efficiently recycle information. But the information captured by these environments does not equate to knowledge.

For political and funding reasons in most countries, it is worth noting that there is little correlation between the lifecycles of the various types of military aircraft such as fighter, strike, transport, trainer, and reconnaissance aircraft. To add the hybrid civil aviation aircraft used by the military, such as helicopters, to the melting pot further distorts any lifecycle correlation.

Just to add spice to the mixture, economic pressures are driving many governments to rethink major defense engineering procurement projects. In the UK, for example, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has embarked upon Performance Partnership Agreement (PPA). This program ensures that its strategic direction can be achieved and will deliver 'value for money'. The objective is to deliver military capability for the future, matched to the changing environments and to delivery and cost targets. There must also be improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of key processes for delivering military systems. This requires efficiency gains of 2.5% each year from 2002 to 2006, including an improvement of 14% in the output efficiency of the Defence Logistics Organisation.

Despite the repeated attempted introduction of 'knowledge management' programs there is little evidence of a defined return on investment for the funding of capturing, sharing and recycling of critical knowledge assets in the military side of the aircraft industry.

In contrast, the pan European Airbus consortium has implemented 'centers of excellence' in engineering and manufacturing. The engineering knowledge circulating in these centers is utilised constantly on all iterations of aircraft in the fleet and generates a high degree of knowledge recycling.
According to Gérard Blanc, Executive Vice President of Operations for Airbus, "We have specialized our industrialization centers. What do I mean by that? After we had made the first aircraft and every partner had been given their responsibility, the natural historically justifiable movement of each of them was to say. "Ah, last time I made the cockpit. This time I want to make the wings." That in the end I can keep for myself the possibility to make an aircraft and keep my competence. This was a trap, which we didn't fall into. We said, "we'll specialize the centers." This is a right and probably unique solution to be competitive and stay so. We have to specialize the centers."

The practice of creating centers of excellence creates a natural 'cluster' of local suppliers. This effect can greatly enhance the recycling of knowledge and help to bridge the 'knowledge loss' gap which unerringly appears around major engineering projects. It sets up a collaborative environment where disparate organisations, engaged in a common purpose, work together on projects, without necessarily belonging to the same company.

There are two principal approaches to clustering:
a) The monolithic approach in which one company is the prime contractor and has the majority of the project expertise within itself. It uses external suppliers for certain elements but does the majority of the design and manufacture itself. This seems to be the norm for military projects in many countries.

b) The open partnership approach in which independent companies, with their own profit and loss accounts, collaborate openly. This is the case with Airbus, which although responsible to governments, is run by committees of partners. And it works!

There is a rapid increase in the adoption of collaboration, particularly in engines and airframes as detailed in the definitive reference, 'Janes All The World's Aircraft'. The key to the success of collaboration is a pragmatic management organization appropriate to the task. That task, according to Gérard Blanc is "The idea being we stop working by functions and we govern every skill under one place, under one boss, one roof, one budget, one deliverable, one objective and they all work together on site. Looks extremely simple but it is extraordinarily powerful"

Coincidentally, on the point of collaboration, Airbus designed the A380 in collaboration with some 60 major airports, ensuring airport compatibility and a smooth entry into service. Deciding to capture and recycle knowledge has resulted in a commonality of avionics from the A320 to the A380 whilst offering all the advantages of a completely new aircraft design.

The Airbus consortium is one of the few 'companies' where engineers, working in clusters around Europe, have recycled their knowledge assets across an expanding portfolio. Due to the collaborative environment, the pay off for engineering is clear, engineering staff churn is very low, pride in achievements is high. The commercial payoff is also high, thanks to the same cockpit layout, procedures and handling characteristics, pilots will be able to make the transition to the A380 from any other Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft with minimal re-training.

So, one of the leading engineering bases in the world, namely military aircraft manufacturing, adopts new engineering techniques to address their business problems and financial metrics. These techniques optimize the pre-production phase and elongate the post-production phase. They may not, as yet, recognise that their engineering knowledge assets may be falling into the gap which these very techniques are creating.

Ian Wallace

First appeared in the EAReport, July 2005.

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