Lean manufacturing in the turbine engine production

Rolls-Royce (RR) aerospace division has the large complex business process, part of which concentrates on manufacturing of turbine engines, producing a range of quality world class products [1]. In response to increased orders from the market place and competition, the firm decided to have the lean manufacturing as a standard solution. The best way to understand lean manufacturing is to start with its roots in the Toyota Production System (TPS) [2] - a system that flexibly responded to customer demand and was efficient at the same time.

Aerospace turbine engine manufacturing is clearly different from automobiles.

The engines are built to order, one or a few at a time over weeks or even months and are often highly customized. So is the model of "lean manufacturing" worth considering? The answer is clearly yes. First, the basic principles of giving customers what they want with shortened lead times by eliminating waste apply to any process, high volume or low volume, customized or standardized. Second, when world class aerospace production models are examined there is much of the same underlying philosophy of the TPS at work in building the engines.

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For example, Airbus factories are among the most efficient and have used relatively standardized, modular designs to create assembly lines in which there is a constant flow of basic and intermediate products, built in most cases on moving lines, and material is carefully sequenced and shifted through the line in a carefully orchestrated flowing pattern - Just-In-Time (JIT) [3]. Quality is built in at the source, rather than inspected in.

Processes are highly standardized and timed. It is the responsibility of each worker, not just a select few inspectors.

Raw material, such as titanium blades, is not brought into the production in advance to store and wait, but brought in on a JIT basis. This report lays out a framework for the lean manufacturing in application to the turbine engine assembly and some nanotechnology-based innovations. The application of these principles depends heavily on how the engine is designed. They assume the engine is designed to be manufacturable and is based on relatively standardized modules, including yet new nanomaterials components.

While each module will not be identical, modules as much as possible should be designed to go through common processes and facilitate flow through the assembly line within predictable times. The model provides a framework and the rest of the report will be organized around elements of this framework, wherever possible illustrating the elements with other production examples. Lean Manufacturing is a holistic approach to enable profitability and competitiveness through the identification and elimination of wasteful practices and behaviour.

Consistent with improving the economics of aerospace vehicles is the transition to a new paradigm for the entire industry, from concept development to operations. This approach involves all processes pertaining to the acquisition, design, development, and manufacturing of a product or system and has been variously called "lean," "agile," or "synchronous" manufacturing [4]. The TPS could simultaneously achieve high quality, low cost, and just-in-time delivery by "shortening the production flow by eliminating waste" [5].

The focus of this concept is always on shortening the production flow and waste is anything that gets in the way of a smooth flow. The theoretical ideal is moving toward continuous flow by eliminating waste. In fact lean manufacturing blurs with Total Quality Management and other Japanese developments to provide their unique and successful production model. In lean manufacturing waste is anything that adds to the time and cost of making a product but does not add value to the product from the customer's point of view.

Value-added activities transform the product into something the customer wants. In manufacturing this is generally a physical transformation of the product to make it to conform to customer expectations. Figure 1 shows a simplified version of the steps required to make a fan blade part of turbine engine subassembly. Only the activities shown in green add value. By add value it is meant that they transform the product physically toward something the customer wants. The grey activities are waste - they do not add value from the customer's perspective.