Logo: Launch into Aerospace

Manufacturing: Getting It Together



Aerospace manufacturing demands an exceptionally broad assortment of skills and facilities. No single company builds an entire flight system. Manufacturers of flight equipment generally specialize in a major area like airframes and structures, spacecraft, propulsion units, airborne systems, and ground support systems.

Within each of these broad areas are scores of sub-specialties. Production of a major flight vehicle –a commercial jetliner, for example – could involve several thousand subcontractors and suppliers organized in “tiers” with increased pressure on first tier suppliers to bring design, investment, and certification qualifications to the table.

The production group is led by a prime contractor, sometimes known as a systems integrator, whose facility is the site for final assembly, rollout, and delivery of the vehicle. Lower-tier manufacturers deliver subassemblies to the plants of high-tier producers where the assemblies are integrated with other assemblies to become subsystems and then systems. Fully tested systems then flow to the prime contractor’s assembly line where they are integrated into the flight vehicle under a carefully developed manufacturing plan.

Major aerospace production programs, whether government-sponsored or commercial, could involve several top-tier principal subcontractors, including some from foreign nations. Work-sharing offers many advantages:
  • It broadens the pool of skills and facilities and helps compress production time.
  • Competition among subcontractors provides the best in performance, quality, at the lowest cost.
  • When the partner is a foreign company, it offers market access for the end product that might not otherwise be available.
Fast-paced exchange of information between the supply base and the prime contractor, high-speed delivery, and rigorous processes to squeeze out unnecessary costs and wasteful processes characterize today’s manufacturing process. Known as lean manufacturing, moving assembly lines, and accompanying lean techniques have aided this effort tremendously over the past several years.

As an example, the time it takes a Boeing Next-Generation 737 to move through final assembly has reduced from 22 days down to 10.