aerospace
Super plastic forming
and diffusion bonding
processes - a
differentiating capability.
Work for the F-35 is
expected to sustain
jobs at Samlesbury
until around 2025
Blenkinsop as carbon fibre, advanced fabrication and
machining. ‘The complexity of the shapes we are able to
lay, and the advanced machining of the carbon once it’s
cured, represent a differentiating capability that you
wouldn’t find elsewhere’ he says. Wilson elaborates: ‘It’s
also how we machine it - we mill it, profile, drill and
countersink to such tolerances that we have total
interchangeability of panels on any Typhoon. We use
PCD cutters - the cost is high, the life is low, and you’ve
got to handle the dust that goes into the coolant, all
representing a significant improvement challenge.
On fabrication, the company’s strength lies in its
knowledge of and capacity for SPFDB (super plastic
forming & diffusion bonding). ‘We make products
which it’s fair to say nobody else in the world could do’
says Wright. ‘The foreplanes (ie for the Typhoon) are a
prime example; and we’ve used that technology for
nozzle bay doors on the F-35.’ It’s an impressive facility;
briefly the process uses pressurised Argon (up to 400psi)
to inflate the spaces between selectively bonded sheets of
titanium at temperatures of up to 900degC. The result is
a very light, very strong ‘honeycomb’ type structure -
perfect for high performance aircraft components.
And so to machining, principally milling of titanium
and aluminium, and mainly complex 5-axis work. ‘There’s
a lot of investment going on to support the partnership
with Lockheed Martin’ says Wright; ‘we have identified the
complex parts that we’ll manufacture in house, and those
we’ll put out to subcontract. We do 20% of the parts, but
that amounts to 80% of the value. Every couple of years we
check the market to see how the subcontractors have come
on.’ What the subcontractors are judged against is
Samlesbury’s investment in the best machines possible to
manufacture the product; and Dave Wright echoes
Blenkinsop’s point about the need to ensure that the high
end machine tool suppliers engaged in the project are able
to support the number of machines needed in 2010-2012.
The driver on all this is to attain the ‘one a day’ target.
‘We are doing this on Airbus parts’ says Mark Wilson
‘but they are less complex’ - and for the F-35, one a day
actually amounts to 60 parts. The mass-reduction
challenge presented by the aeroplane has also tended to
result in some very thin-walled features. In the civil
sector, the safety margins are huge, and they have no
stealth characteristics’ he observes. ‘So parts are simpler,
cheaper, designed for manufacture. 10mm wall isn’t thin
for us; we’re looking at 1-2mm - horrible to produce.’
Around 4,700 people are employed on the site, expected
to rise to 6000 by the end of the year. The growth is
associated mainly with centralising the F-35 work, and will
include staff transferring from Warton. ‘There are around
1400 people involved directly in touching the product and
adding value to it as it progresses through the production
processes, says Blenkinsop. ‘Behind that there are another
1000-1200 people supporting that through logistics,
manufacturing engineering, front line management.
His background is the automotive sector. ‘It’s one of the
reasons I’m in this role, because I have a different view of
manufacturing on this scale - it’s a real paradigm shift in
terms of military aircraft manufacturing solutions, going
from 30 a year up to 60 a year on Typhoon and up to one a
day on F-35. The challenge for me is transforming a
workforce that has been focused on traditional aircraft
manufacture to one that’s able to fully engage in all
aspects of continuous improvement, lean activity, and
also the advanced manufacturing context that will be
required.’ The cultural transformation needed, he implies,
is more radical than technical skills transformation.
‘Previously I’ve been involved in very high volume
manufacture of power train and vehicle production.
There’s also a context which drives waste elimination, and
the deployment of the key lean enablers. For example VSM
is a way of life in the automotive industry, understanding
every step of your process, what’s value added and what
isn’t.’ He agrees that ‘lean’ ought to be a ‘given’, but says the
important thing is whether it’s well deployed.
‘Another big challenge we have is the development
of a leadership population, and one of the massive
transformation enablers we’ve had on the site has been
the deployment of the Lean Learning Academy, with a
strong focus on personal leadership development.’ This
idea was originally developed at Ford, introduced by
Jaguar at Halewood, taken up by Airbus, and now it’s
been tailored for Samlesbury’s requirements.
It’s a three week programme, usually for groups of
around 18 people and it takes them from little
experience of the lean toolset to being able to deploy
waste elimination, continuous improvement etc. ‘We
started at the top to make sure that top level leaders
understood what lean tools would be and what sort of
leadership would be needed’ says Nigel Blenkinsop; ‘so
it covers everyone from directors to team leaders and
supervisors - the guys that are actually driving the
business. It’s equipping them with lean enablers; but it’s
also making them all think about their role in the
cultural transformation that’s needed.’
46 MWP may 2009
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